Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883-1924

Who coined 1857’s Sepoy Mutiny as India’s First War of Independence?Savarkar.When leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale were asking for just the dominion status from the British. Who went to England and started a full-fledged revolution for liberation?Savarkar.Who organised the first ever bonfire boycott of British goods, even before Gandhiji landed in India?Savarkar.Who got his hands on the “Bomb Making Manual”, and translated it to send it to India, giving new rise to Revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh?Savarkar.Who was deemed to be so dangerous to the British Crown, that he was given 2-life sentences for the first time in British history?Savarkar.On hearing about 2 life-sentences, who laughed and said: “At least, I was able to convince you Britishers about the Hindu concept of multiple lives”?Savarkar.Who earned the nickname “Veer” in his early childhood because he gathered young boys to fight back against the rioters attacking their village?Savarkar.Whose book on “1857 Freedom-struggle” became standard for recruitment in HRA?Savarkar.This is what one gets after burning through one's life for India, some get oblivion, while others like Savarkar gets vilification.Sad.

A genuine and heart wrenching reading experience. Vikram is a very ardent and articulative writer who knows to grab the pulse of reader.Savarkar is my ideal and I have waited for 30 years to get a genuine biography of India's finest revolutionary and the father of hindu nationalism.

Absolutely blown away by this book, there is so much to digest. Along with Savarkar's early life, genesis of revolutionary nationalism and nationalist movement is presented here. Also, the little known activities of early nationalists in Europe before WW1 can be found here. These make for exciting reading.Cannot wait for Part 2

"I am a reformist at heart." I am glad that we finally have a biography dedicated to Savarkar. This book was an eye-opener for me.I didn't know about Savarkar anything till 2015. One of the bravest anti-colonial revolutionaries of Freedom Struggle of India was suspiciously missing from our school books, as well as the mainstream political discourse. And it is obvious why. Only those belonging to a particular ideology, find a mention in general textbooks. The entire credit for Indian Independence is given to Gandhi and Congress leaders.However, Congress from its inception was 'an institutionalized channel of communication between the rulers and the ruled.' Savarkar coined the phrase “The First War of Indian Independence” of 1857 while the colonial historians tried to dub it as 'Sepoy mutiny'. He was also one of the first Indian leader to have organized a mass bonfire of foreign goods. but also the first student to be rusticated from a government-aided institution for political purposes.He was one of the first organized secret societies in India – the Mitra Mela (later became Abhinav Bharat) in the early 1900s that called for total and complete freedom. In London, he built a vast network of revolutionaries across Europe and also produced a huge corpus of intellectual output for the revolutionary movement.He was also a voracious reader who read not only Marathi but world literature. Unlike most revolutionaries, who took inspiration from Marxist, he took inspiration from Italian revolutionaries like Mazzini and Garibaldi and Indian heroes like Shivaji.He also contributed immensely to the purification of the Marathi language and introduction of new words for English equivalents.Someone on Instagram wrote this (when writing about Bhagat Singh) 'Sadly, the right-wing has hijacked this Marx inspired martyr and has presented him as one of their own ideologue since they don't have a freedom fighter to take pride in.' LOL Let me introduce you to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Wonderful book. If you're open minded, you must read this book to know to know what Savarkar truly is.