10 facts to remember on Veer Savarkar's 139th birth anniversary

Indian independence activist and politician Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is perhaps one of the most controversial figures in India’s recent history. The often-heard term ‘Hindutva’ was coined by him in a pamphlet that was written and published in the 1920s while Savarkar was in jail. The pamphlet became path-breaking in the sense it promoted the concept of Hinduism being a political and cultural identity. Savarkar was born on 28 May 1883 to a Marathi Brahmin family in Nashik’s Bhagur. From his college days, Savarkar was attracted to the radical arm of the Indian nationalist struggle. While studying law in England, he organised radical political activities for which he was imprisoned by the British government. Savarkar was a great admirer of fascism and wrote aggressively against British rule in India. He was a freedom fighter, politician,  activist, lawyer, writer, social reformer and formulator of the Hindutva philosophy. On Veer Savarkar’s 139th birth anniversary, let’s take a look at some lesser-known facts about him:

1. In his teenage, Savarkar formed a youth organisation named ‘Mitra Mela’ to bring in national and revolutionary ideas.
2. Inspired by Lokmanya Tilak’s appeal to boycott British goods and propagate the idea of ‘Swadeshi’, he burnt out all the foreign goods on Dussehra in 1905.
3. Savarkar promoted atheism and rationality and dispersed cow worship as superstitious. He asked his followers, ‘Care for cows but do not worship them.’
4. In 1909, Savarkar got arrested on charges of planning an armed revolt against the Morle-Minto reform. He attempted to escape by diving in the water but was caught. In 1911, he was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment in Kala Pani, the cellular jail of Andamans.
5. Savarkar is often called a traitor for begging for mercy from the British Government when he was imprisoned. But his supporters claimed that Savarkar just asked to free his followers.
6. He was released from Jail in 1924 under strict conditions of not taking part in politics for five years.
7. The British Government banned 8 works of Savarkar including the Indian War of Independence 1857, Drama Usshaap, Shraddhanand and Mazzini which was his biography in Marathi.
8. In his book Hindutva, Savarkar advocated the idea of two separate nations for Hindus and Muslims. The theory was later passed as a resolution by the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937.
9. Savarkar was charge-sheeted following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi but was later acquitted by the court due to a lack of corroborative evidence.
10.  In 1964, Veer Savarkar wished to attain Samadhi as India had already gotten independence. He started a hunger strike on 1 February 1966 and breathed his last on 26 February 1966. In 2002, the Port Blair airport in Andaman was named Veer Savarkar International Airport.

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