Veer Savarkar: From Revolutionary to Hindutva Ideologue

Few figures in Indian history evoke as much debate as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966). A revolutionary firebrand in his youth who dedicated himself to armed struggle against British imperialism, Savarkar later became the architect of Hindutva-a political ideology that continues to shape India’s discourse today. His journey from a fearless nationalist willing to sacrifice everything for independence to a theorist of Hindu cultural nationalism reveals a complex transformation shaped by personal experiences, imprisonment, and the changing political landscape of colonial India.

Early influences and revolutionary zeal (1883-1906) 🔗

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was born on 28 May 1883 into a Chitpavan Brahmin family in the village of Bhagur, near Nashik in Maharashtra. From childhood, he demonstrated an inclination toward nationalist causes. The execution of the Chapekar brothers-who had assassinated British officials in Pune-left a profound impression on the young Vinayak. Equally influential was the fiery nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, whose radical approach to challenging British authority shaped Savarkar’s worldview.

During his school years, Savarkar formed the Rashtrabhakta Samuha, a secret revolutionary society that later evolved into the Mitra Mela (Society of Friends) in 1901, established alongside his elder brother Ganesh Savarkar. By 1906, this organization transformed into the Abhinav Bharat Society (Young India Society), modeled directly on Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy movement. The primary objectives were twofold: overthrowing British rule through armed revolt and reviving Hindu pride and identity.

Savarkar’s admiration for Mazzini was not merely theoretical. He saw in the Italian revolutionary a template for Indian liberation-a leader who combined nationalist passion with organized revolutionary action. While studying at Fergusson College in Pune, Savarkar continued his political activities and gained recognition as a promising young radical. Tilak, impressed by his dedication, helped him secure the Shivaji Scholarship in 1906 to study law in London. On 7 October 1905, Savarkar had organized the burning of foreign cloth in protest against the Bengal partition-reportedly the first such bonfire in India, an act that would later become a powerful symbol of the Swadeshi movement.

London years and radical activism (1906-1910) 🔗

Arriving in London to pursue his law studies at Gray’s Inn, Savarkar quickly immersed himself in revolutionary circles. He became associated with India House, established by Shyamji Krishna Varma, which served as a hub for Indian revolutionaries in Britain. Here, Savarkar founded the Free India Society and engaged with international revolutionaries, including Russian exiles in Paris.

During this period, Savarkar translated Mazzini’s biography into Marathi, which was secretly published in India by his brother. The book proved extraordinarily influential-by British estimates, each of the 2,000 copies was read by at least 30 people. More significantly, Savarkar began working on his landmark historical study, The Indian War of Independence, 1857, which reinterpreted what the British called the “Sepoy Mutiny” as India’s first unified national uprising against colonial rule. The British immediately banned the book upon publication, recognizing its potential to inspire further revolutionary activity.

Savarkar advocated violent methods to terrorize the British administration, including bomb-making and assassination of colonial officials. According to historian Mark Juergensmeyer, Savarkar helped instruct fellow revolutionaries in sabotage techniques learned from Russian expatriates. His influence extended to Madanlal Dhingra, a fellow student who, in 1909, assassinated Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, a British India Office official. Savarkar allegedly supplied both the weapon and the ideological conviction that guided Dhingra’s action.

The transnational revolutionary network 🔗

Savarkar’s London years revealed his strategic thinking about revolutionary struggle. In May 1907, he organized celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the 1857 uprising at Tilak House in London. His revolutionary texts circulated internationally-the banned history of 1857 was eventually printed in Holland by Madam Bhikaiji Cama using false covers of popular classics like Don Quixote and Oliver Twist to evade British censors. Copies reached sympathizers in Ireland, France, Russia, the United States, Egypt, Germany, and Brazil. This global network demonstrated Savarkar’s understanding that India’s struggle against British imperialism was connected to anti-colonial movements worldwide.

Arrest, trial, and Andaman imprisonment (1910-1920) 🔗

The net closed around Savarkar in early 1910. He was implicated in the assassination of Nashik’s district collector A.M.T. Jackson, killed by Anant Laxman Kanhere using one of twenty Browning pistols that Savarkar had allegedly smuggled into India. On 13 March 1910, British authorities arrested him in London on charges including procurement and distribution of arms, waging war against the state, and delivering seditious speeches.

What followed was one of the most dramatic episodes in revolutionary history. While being transported to India aboard the SS Morea, the ship docked at Marseille. Savarkar made a daring escape attempt, squeezing through the porthole of the ship’s bathroom and swimming to French shores to claim political asylum. However, French port officials, collaborating with the British, handed him back before he could reach safety. This incident sparked an international diplomatic controversy, with France lodging a protest and the case eventually reaching the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

The cellular jail experience 🔗

Following two trials, Savarkar received an unprecedented sentence of 50 years’ imprisonment-two consecutive life terms-and was transported to the notorious Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands on 4 July 1911. Conditions were brutal. Political prisoners faced extreme physical torture, forced hard labor, and deliberate dehumanization designed to break their spirit. Savarkar was often kept in solitary confinement, and the administration’s stated goal was “isolation and containment, rather than reform and reclamation.”

It was during this period that Savarkar’s ideological transformation began. According to later scholars, his experiences in prison contributed significantly to his shifting views. Savarkar claimed that Muslim warders treated Muslim prisoners favorably while mistreating Hindus, and he observed Hindu prisoners being converted to Islam through inducements of easier labor and better food. Whether these observations were accurate or shaped by the trauma of imprisonment, they profoundly affected his thinking. The pan-Islamic Khilafat Movement, which gained momentum during his imprisonment, may have further influenced his views about Muslims and Hindu-Muslim relations.

Between 1911 and 1920, Savarkar submitted multiple clemency petitions to the British government. In his 1913 petition, he described himself as a “prodigal son” eager to return to “the parental doors of the Government.” In 1920, he wrote renouncing his revolutionary past and pledging to support constitutional development. These petitions remain controversial-critics view them as surrender, while supporters argue they were strategic moves to continue nationalist work outside prison walls.

Formulating the Hindutva doctrine (1920-1924) 🔗

In May 1921, Savarkar was transferred from the Andamans to Ratnagiri Jail on the Indian mainland. It was here, during 1922, that he composed his most influential ideological work: Essentials of Hindutva, published in 1923 under the pseudonym “A Mahratta.” This text would lay the foundation for modern Hindu nationalism.

Savarkar defined “Hindutva” not as a religious concept but as a cultural-national identity. A Hindu, in his formulation, was anyone who regarded India (Bharatvarsha) as both their fatherland (Pitrubhumi) and their holy land (Punyabhumi)-the cradle land of their religion. This definition encompassed Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, all of whom had originated in the Indian subcontinent. However, it effectively excluded Muslims and Christians, whose holiest sites lay outside India in Mecca and Jerusalem respectively. Savarkar argued that this “extra-territorial loyalty” prevented them from being fully part of the Hindu nation.

This doctrine represented a dramatic departure from his earlier writings. In The Indian War of Independence, 1857, Savarkar had celebrated Hindu-Muslim unity and called it “unjust and foolish” to nurse hatred against Muslims. Now, Hindu identity became the central organizing principle. The transformation from Indian nationalist to Hindu nationalist was complete.

Hindu Sanghatan and social reform (1924-1937) 🔗

Released from prison on 6 January 1924 but confined to Ratnagiri district and prohibited from political activity, Savarkar channeled his energies into what he called Hindu Sanghatan-the consolidation and reform of Hindu society. He identified what he termed the “Seven Shackles” binding Hindus: prohibition of touch with certain castes (sparshabandi), prohibition of interdining (rotibandi), prohibition of intercaste marriages (betibandi), prohibition of pursuing certain occupations (vyavasayabandi), prohibition of seafaring (sindhubandi), prohibition of Vedic rites for lower castes (vedoktabandi), and prohibition of reconversion (shuddhibandi).

Savarkar worked actively to eradicate untouchability in the conservative Ratnagiri region. He organized temple entry movements, promoted inter-dining across caste lines, and championed the Shuddhi (reconversion) movement to bring those who had converted to Islam or Christianity back into the Hindu fold. In a 1920 letter from the Andamans, he had written: “Just as I feel that I should rebel against foreign rule over Hindusthan, I feel I should rebel against caste discrimination and untouchability.”

His approach to social reform was strategic as well as principled. He argued that caste divisions weakened Hindu society and made it vulnerable to conversion by other religions. A unified Hindu community, stripped of internal hierarchies, would be stronger both culturally and politically. This vision of Hindu unity, however, remained defined against an “other”-the Muslim and Christian communities whose presence in India Savarkar increasingly viewed with suspicion.

In 1937, the newly elected government of Bombay Presidency unconditionally released Savarkar from all restrictions. He immediately joined the Hindu Mahasabha and began traveling widely as an orator. That same year, at the organization’s Ahmedabad session, he articulated a position that would prove prophetic and divisive: “There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation.”

The revolutionary who had once fought for Indian independence had become the theorist of Hindu nationalism. The young man who wrote of Hindu-Muslim unity in 1857 now advocated a two-nation theory that would eventually find its mirror image in Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s demands for Pakistan. Savarkar’s journey from revolutionary to ideologue reflects the complex, often contradictory paths that nationalist movements can take-paths shaped by personal trauma, political calculation, and the irresolvable tensions of colonial societies.

What do you think? Can Savarkar’s transformation from secular revolutionary to Hindu nationalist be understood solely through his prison experiences, or were the seeds of this ideology present earlier in his life? How do we evaluate historical figures whose contributions to one cause came at the expense of communal harmony?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitpavan_Brahmin
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Gangadhar_Tilak
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Damodar_Savarkar
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhinav_Bharat_Society
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_House
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indian_War_of_Independence_(book)
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madanlal_Dhingra
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_Jail
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentials_of_Hindutva
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Mahasabha