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Vision of a Hindu nation - The Sunday Observer

John Norris ()
18-24 May 1997

Title : Vision of a Hindu nation
Author : John Norris
Publication : The Sunday Observer
Date : May 18-24, 1997

Vinayak Damodarpant Savarkar, better-known as Swantantryaveer Savarkar, lived to
the ripe age of 83, when he gave up his life by resorting to a fast in the spirit
of Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram. Despite ill-health and weakness due to old age,
Savarkar astounded doctors by Surviving 22 days with little damage to his
deteriorating body. It may have been the result of his yogic powers, but more than
that it was his indomitable spirit that couldn't be broken even during the testing
times of his transportation in the Andamans.

Savarkar was merely 27 years and 8 months when he was implicated in the Jackson
murder trial and sentenced to two transportations for life. Savarkar's life was
an endless cycle of trials and tribulations, but he never lost the courage of his
convictions. All his life, he envisioned the goal of an independent and
integrated India, a Hindustan based on the principles of Hindutva: and though he
lived to see independent India, it pained him no end that the limbs of the
Motherland had to be torn asunder.

He experienced the initial stirrings of patriotism when the Chaphekar brothers who
killed Rand on June 22, 1897, became martyrs. Prompted by his fierce desire to
boot out the British from India, he began his efforts in a small way with the
setting up of Mitra Mela in 1900, which became the Abhinav Bharat Society in 1904.
Later, he aggressively supported the revolutionary movement, smuggling pistols
through books from London, where he stayed to do law. In the era of Gandhian
politics and social reforms, Savarkar stood out as a oddity, a revolutionary who
pushed armed revolt as a necessary evil. Influenced by Mazzini of Young Italy,
Savarkar succeeded in spreading his revolutionary movement in Maharashtra


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