Veer Savarkar: The Historian Extraordinaire

The nation that has no consciousness of its past has no future. Equally true it is that a nation must develop its capacity not only of claiming a past, but also of knowing how to use it for the furtherance of its future. (1)

The history of the tremendous Revolution that was enacted in the year 1857 has never been written in this scientific spirit by an author, Indian or foreign. (2)

We take up your cry, we revere your flag; we are determined to continue that fiery mission of ‘away with the foreigner’, which you uttered, amidst the prophetic thundering of the revolutionary war. (3)

The [chapter] is only a small fragment of a book containing nearly 470 pages, each page redolent of the most inflammatory language with quotations from English authors describing most pathetic and pitiably tragic scenes and so forth.(4)

Savarkar, who wished the Hindus to be reborn into a martial race, expressed his hope that under the able guidance of Ambedkar the Mahar brethren would be re-animated with the military qualities and their military uplift would contribute to the consolidation of Hindus. (5)

When due to misguided political whims and lack of vision, almost all the leaders of Congress party have been decrying all the soldiers in Indian Army as mercenaries, it is heartening to know that Veer Savarkar is fearlessly exhorting the youths of India to enlist in armed forces. These enlisted youths themselves provide us with trained men and soldiers for our Indian National Army. (6)

Was Chandragupta a social outcaste? Was he not a Kshatriya? What matters though! Chandragupta could have said with justifiable pride, “More than any of you, nominal caste-born Kshatriyas, who bowed your heads to the Mlechhas, the Greek emperor and his commanders, I, a ‘peerless’ Chandragupta, have a greater claim to being a Kshatriya in as much as with my sword I have completely vanquished those very Mlenchhas in every battlefield.” With the same haughty affront of Karna, he could have flung in the face of those railing enemies the following words:

It is full of facts congested in a small space arranged with skill and made to speak with tongues of fore and love. In my opinion every Indian politician ought to read it. (8)

We ought to read history not with a view to finding out the best excuse to perpetuate the old strife and stress, bickerings and bloodsheds, whether in the name of our blessed motherland or of our Lord God, that divided man from man and race from race, but precisely for the contrary reason…

Ever since I was in Ratnagiri the District Hindusabha there along with some of my distinguished Bhandari friends in Konkan have been demanding entry into the Navy for the Konkan Hindus. Now that the Government has thrown open, under pressure of circumstances, the services in the navy to the Hindus we shall be only harming our own interests if we lose this long expected chance to revive the naval military spirit in our people in Konkan….

It is these Hindu communities like the Dhandaris, Kharvis and others who once rendered the Maratha Navy a terror over the Portuguese and the English and had inflicted several crushing defeats in naval engagements on them as for example when in a sea-fight the well-known English war-ship ‘Revenge” was captured by the Marathas. The children of Konkan, as it is said regarding the children of Britain, begin to play with the waves as soon as they begin to play with toys and have an inborn aptitude to make the best fighting material for the sea forces of our nation. Unfortunately these naval instincts were deliberately suppressed till today by the British Government….