Swatantrya Veer Savarkar - The Pole Star  

A thousand emotions are swirling in my head since I saw Swatantrya Veer Savarkar last night.

Enough has been said  about the movie itself so will not write yet another review. But suffice to say that Randeep Hooda has lived the character of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He has not acted, he has burrowed deep under the skin of one of the most towering personalities of the Indian Freedom Struggle.  

It is not easy to encapsulate a lifetime of a man of many talents and accomplishments like Veer Savarkar in under three hours; obviously, a lot gets left out. But what Hooda has managed to cover in the movie is in itself awe-inspiring.  

I discovered Savarkar at an early age. Our home in Goa was full of books, and there were quite a few by Savarkar. I read his first-person account of his tenure of Kala Paani, Mazi Janmathep, when I was 13 or 14, and was moved to tears. The atrocities that he faced, the indignities, the sadism of David Barry, all impacted me deeply at that tender age, but what impacted me even more was the never-say-die spirit of the man, his literary genius that blossomed even in that tiny prison cell of Cellular jail and the soaring optimism of his  spirit.  

Yesterday, when I watched the recreation of those atrocities in the movie, I realised that powerful as my young imagination was, it was not as powerful as the images I was seeing on the screen. I cried once again like I had done  when I was 13, tears streaming down my cheeks. And yet, I had to remind myself, that I was seeing 10 long years of tortures and indignities condensed in 15 minutes screen time!  

There is a scene in the movie, where after his release from prison, Veer Savarkar is having his first meal with his family. It is a simple, frugal meal, just bhaji-bhakri. But as Yamunabai serves it to him, Savarkar is shown to be  breaking down. It is a rare moment of vulnerability exhibited by a man who survived a decade on the stinking, tasteless, nutrition less food of the most notorious jail in the world! Randeep Hooda has shown the vulnerability well.  

When you realise that Savarkar was the only Indian freedom fighter who was sentenced to 50 years of imprisonment, you understand the bitterness behind the on-screen dialogue, ‘Gandhi itna badaa kab ban gaya?’ (When did Gandhi become this big?). Veer Savarkar lost his freedom, his family, his property and his degree for the sake of this nation, while the ‘great soul’ that Bharat chose to father the nation lost only his well-tailored suits  made in South Africa!  

As you see a procession of young boys aged 18-20-22 embrace the hangman’s noose with a smile and a defiant gaze in the movie, you wonder why their names have been erased from Bharat’s history and who erased them? The Chapekar brothers, Khudiram Bose, Madanlal Dhingra, Udham Singh, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Anant Kanhere - where are the flyovers named after them? Where are the airports, expressways, universities, government schemes that bear the names of these sons of  Bharat Mata?  

You see Savarkar’s narrow, windowless, claustrophobic cell in Andamans where he underwent solitary confinement six times in ten years, and you contrast it with the manor grounds of the Aga Khan Palace where Gandhi was ‘detained’ but had access to oil massages, specially-made food, goat’s milk and dry fruits.

You see the visuals of Savarkar pushing the crusher in Cellular jail for eight hours a day, seven days a week and you compare it with Nehru’s ‘jail’ in  the Nagar fort, where he had a special badminton court made for him and a special rose garden laid because the aristocratic prince of India liked to smell the roses. And you wonder, what made the people of Bharat follow false prophets of Ahimsa while their real heroes either were hanged or faced unspeakable torture in jails?  

When the screen Savarkar looks you straight in the eye and asks, ‘why was no Congress leader ever sent to Kaala Pani?', you have no answer.

This movie portrays Gandhi for what he really was, a mediocre, insecure leader with a massive ego and a weird masochistic love for the Muslim community, someone who never allowed anyone in the Congress to grow apart from him and his blue-eyed boy, Nehru.  

I can understand what the British did to Veer Savarkar, after all, he was perceived as the greatest threat to their King and their country. But what angers me is how we, the people of Bharat treated Savarkar and continue to do so even today.  

He was the only freedom fighter who was imprisoned twice, on false, trumped up charges after Independence, whose property that was confiscated by the British crown was never returned back to him even after Independence and who has to live with the slur of maafi-veer thrown at him by people who wouldn’t survive one hour locked inside the elevator before micturating in their pants!  

Why this hatred against a man who asked for nothing from the state? The Savarkar family asked for no honour, no favours, no political patronage for their descendants, no awards, neither did they ask for any money. Veer Savarkar asked for nothing, but he got plenty in return from a nation ruled by a bunch of ungrateful and mediocre rulers! Veer Savarkar got indignities, insults and ridicule heaped on him by men and women who are not worth to be dust on his left toe!  

Veer Savarkar lived and died like a Veer, like the brave man he was. He endured every false charge, every indignity, every insult thrown his way with equanimity and when his time came, he faced death too with equal stoicism, on his own terms, fasting his way out. How many leaders of  independent India can claim that?  

Randeep Hooda has done the coming generations of Bharat a huge favour by making this movie immortalising the life and times of one of the most towering personalities of Bharat. If you haven’t watched it yet, do watch it and take your family and friends with you. 

If you go looking for Randeep Hooda in the movie, you will be disappointed because you won’t find him. What you will find is a man called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar dominating each frame like a colossus. Watch  Swatantrya Veer Savarkar movie because it tells you a story of Bharat that everyone conveniently forgot!