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The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts
Did Savarkar battle a stormy sea when he attempted his legendary escape at Marseilles? Did Gandhiji and he stay together ‘as friends’ in London as Savarkar claimed during Gandhiji’s assassination trial? Did he turn against Muslims because of the cruelty of jailers in the Andamans? What is one to make of his ‘mercy petitions’ to the British? Did he pledge to be ‘politically useful’ to the British and accept conditions for his release that even the British had not demanded? During the Quit India movement, did Savarkar promise ‘whole-hearted cooperation’ to the British? What did he seek from the British? Was Savarkar the one who showed Subhas Bose the path that Netaji then followed?
What did Savarkar think of Hinduism, about our beliefs and ‘holy cows’, about the texts Hindus hold to be sacred? Have our people been suffused with Hindutva as Savarkar maintained? What sort of a State did he envisage? Is Savarkar being resurrected today to erase the one great inconvenience—Gandhiji?
In The New Icon, Arun Shourie delves deep into Savarkar’s books, essays, speeches, statements to answer these and other questions. He exhumes archives of the British government. He takes us through contemporary records. And unearths facts that will surprise you.
What did Savarkar think of Hinduism, about our beliefs and ‘holy cows’, about the texts Hindus hold to be sacred? Have our people been suffused with Hindutva as Savarkar maintained? What sort of a State did he envisage? Is Savarkar being resurrected today to erase the one great inconvenience—Gandhiji?
In The New Icon, Arun Shourie delves deep into Savarkar’s books, essays, speeches, statements to answer these and other questions. He exhumes archives of the British government. He takes us through contemporary records. And unearths facts that will surprise you.
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Published January 24, 2025
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About the author
Arun Shourie
39 books307 followersIndian economist, journalist, author and politician.
He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the Indian Express and The Times of India and a Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Vajpayee Ministry (1998–2004). He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982 and the Padma Bhushan in 1990.
Popularly perceived as one of the main Hindu nationalist intellectuals during the 90s and early 2000s.
He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the Indian Express and The Times of India and a Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Vajpayee Ministry (1998–2004). He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982 and the Padma Bhushan in 1990.
Popularly perceived as one of the main Hindu nationalist intellectuals during the 90s and early 2000s.
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February 9, 2026
There are writers who arrive in your life early and quietly set the coordinates of your thinking. You do not always realise it at the time, but years later you can trace certain intellectual instincts back to those first encounters. For me, Arun Shourie was one such figure.
Long before today’s noisy polarities hardened, his books and essays shaped how I first approached the idea of Hindutva—sharp, sceptical, grounded in argument rather than slogans. That is why his recent turn, and especially his new book on Savarkar, feels less like a routine intervention and more like a reckoning.
Arun Shourie was among the earliest authors who decisively influenced how I understood Hindutva. Today, however, he is often described—sometimes admiringly, sometimes with irritation—as a Hindutva thinker who has drifted off-script.
Being anti-establishment was always central to Shourie’s public persona, something he carried almost as a mark of honour. After 2014, though, that contrarian impulse seems to have intensified, taking on a sharper, more confrontational edge.
What makes this shift particularly striking is that, in pushing back so forcefully, Shourie now appears to be questioning—if not actively dismantling—the very intellectual and ideological framework he himself helped construct over decades, especially since the 1980s.
This tome has therefore drawn attention not only because of its subject, but because of its author. The spotlight falls as much on Shourie as it does on Savarkar.
Even before I delve deep uinto the work, I must admit that this tome leaves little doubt that Shourie is unwilling to treat Savarkar with reverence. Instead, he subjects him to a close, often unsparing scrutiny.
One of the book’s central moves is to highlight the tension between contemporary Hindutva beliefs and Savarkar’s own positions.
Shourie points out, for instance, that Savarkar favoured ‘gau palan’ (the practical rearing of cattle) over ‘gau pujan’ (ritual veneration), even arguing that excessive cow adoration had led to what he called ‘“rashtra ki buddhi-hatya kaa paap”‘—the sin of destroying the nation’s intelligence.
Savarkar’s views on food further confuse any attempt to turn him into a simple cultural symbol. He insisted that eating beef or pork was not a religious issue at all, but a matter of personal choice and bodily need. In his own words, cattle should ordinarily not be consumed because of their utility, yet he saw no inherent moral or religious prohibition against eating their meat—no different, he argued, from practices common in England or America.
By assembling these positions, Shourie forces an uncomfortable question into the open: how neatly does Savarkar actually fit into the ideological mould he is often placed in today? Whether one agrees with Shourie or not, the book makes it clear that this is less an act of devotion than an act of interrogation—and perhaps, in some ways, self-interrogation as well.
For starters, Shourie positions himself not as a celebrant and not even primarily as a defender, but as an examiner of records—someone impatient with slogans, allergic to mythmaking, and deeply suspicious of moral shortcuts. This is not a book that asks whether Savarkar should be admired or condemned. It asks something far more uncomfortable: what do the documents actually say, and why have we become so careless with them?
From the first pages, Shourie’s tone is unmistakable. He is not interested in atmospherics or ideological mood music. His method is accumulative, almost relentless. Letters, petitions, court records, contemporaneous accounts, internal contradictions in secondary sources—everything is dragged into the light.
The book insists, repeatedly, that opinions about Savarkar have been allowed to harden into certainties without being tested against primary evidence. Shourie’s irritation is not merely political; it is epistemic. He is angry at how history is handled.
What makes this book distinctive is that it does not try to replace one icon with another. Shourie does not attempt to recast Savarkar as a misunderstood saint or a flawless revolutionary. Instead, he dismantles the process through which Savarkar has been flattened into a caricature—either demonized as a proto-fascist or sanctified as a nationalist hero—by returning obsessively to chronology, context, and causality.
The argument is not that Savarkar was always right, but that he has been consistently misrepresented, often through messy scholarship masquerading as moral certainty.
The central battleground, inevitably, is Savarkar’s petitions for clemency. Shourie treats these documents not as embarrassing footnotes to be explained away, but as texts to be read closely, in their legal, historical, and psychological context. He shows how similar petitions were routine, even encouraged, under colonial law; how their language followed standardized formats; how selective quotation has been used to imply moral collapse where none is self-evident.
What emerges is not a simple exoneration, but a reframing. The question shifts from “Why did Savarkar beg?” to “Why are we reading these documents as confessions rather than as legal instruments?”
This shift matters because it exposes a larger habit in Indian political discourse: the tendency to retroactively moralize actions without reconstructing the constraints under which they were taken. Shourie is particularly sharp in pointing out how Savarkar is judged by standards never applied consistently to others—how revolutionary violence, compromise, silence, or tactical retreat are interpreted differently depending on who performs them.
The book quietly but firmly accuses generations of commentators of double standards, and it does so not through rhetoric but through juxtaposition of facts.
What complicates the reading experience is Shourie’s refusal to soften his prose. He names names. He points out errors with a prosecutor’s precision. He quotes critics against themselves, sometimes at length. For some readers, this tone will feel abrasive, even obsessive. But it is inseparable from the book’s purpose. ‘The New Icon’ is not written to persuade the undecided; it is written to confront what Shourie sees as a culture of intellectual laziness. His real antagonist is not any single ideological camp, but the casualness with which serious claims are made about historical figures.
At the same time, the book reveals something deeply postcolonial in its anxiety. Savarkar’s afterlife, Shourie suggests, is less about Savarkar than about contemporary India’s struggle to narrate itself. The following questions arise:
1) Who gets remembered as legitimate?
2) Whose nationalism is deemed respectable?
3) Which kinds of resistance are retroactively endorsed, and which are sanitized or erased?
Savarkar becomes a fault line, not because his life offers easy answers, but because it exposes unresolved tensions in how India understands its past.
Shourie is particularly effective when he dissects the claim that Savarkar was marginal or irrelevant after his release. By tracing Savarkar’s intellectual influence, organizational work, and political interventions, he challenges the narrative that imprisonment ended Savarkar’s historical significance.
Again, this is not romanticized. Savarkar’s ideas are presented as consequential, controversial, and sometimes troubling—but not negligible. The book insists that influence cannot be measured solely by official power or public adulation.
What the book does not do—and this is crucial—is offer emotional closure. There is no final synthesis that resolves Savarkar into a morally coherent figure.
Shourie seems uninterested in such closure. Instead, the book leaves Savarkar where history often leaves its most difficult figures: suspended between admiration and unease. The insistence is not that Savarkar must be liked, but that he must be read accurately.
This insistence extends to Shourie’s critique of academic and journalistic practices. He repeatedly exposes how secondary sources cite one another in circular fashion, how footnotes become shields rather than safeguards, how interpretation hardens into dogma through repetition. In this sense,
‘The New Icon’ is as much a book about historiography as it is about Savarkar. It asks uncomfortable questions about who gets to write history, how reputations are constructed, and how easily intellectual authority can substitute for evidence.
Reading the book is not a smooth experience. It demands patience. It expects the reader to follow chains of argument, to care about dates, phrasing, omissions. Those looking for narrative elegance or psychological portraiture may find it dry. But this dryness is intentional. Shourie’s style mirrors his thesis: facts matter, even when they are inconvenient, even when they complicate our preferred stories.
What lingered with me after finishing the book was not a changed opinion about Savarkar so much as a heightened suspicion of certainty. The book makes it difficult to accept easy moral binaries. It shows how reputations are not discovered but assembled—through selection, emphasis, and repetition.
Savarkar’s transformation into a “new icon,” Shourie argues, is not a spontaneous phenomenon but a reaction to decades of distortion. Whether one agrees with Shourie’s conclusions or not, the process he exposes is hard to ignore.
In the end, ‘The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts’ is not a comforting book. It does not flatter the reader’s ideological preferences. It does not offer a hero to cheer or a villain to denounce with clean conscience. Instead, it offers something rarer and more unsettling: a demand for intellectual discipline. It insists that before we judge the past, we owe it the courtesy of accuracy.
Savarkar emerges not as a resolved symbol but as a reminder of how fragile historical truth can be in a polarized culture. Shourie’s book may not convince everyone, but it succeeds in something arguably more important. It makes careless certainty feel irresponsible.
And in a public discourse increasingly driven by slogans rather than scrutiny, that may be its most enduring intervention.
To conclude, I must admit that I have read Savarkar through several lenses—admiring, critical, archival, polemical. From Dhananjay Keer’s early, sympathetic biography to A.G. Noorani’s sharply sceptical ‘Savarkar and Hindutva’, from Savarkar’s own writings like ‘Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?’ to the monumental, archive-driven biographies by Vikram Sampath—’Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past (1883–1924)’ and ‘Savarkar: A Contested Legacy (1924–1966)’—the figure has never lacked interpreters. Each of these works adds a layer, a correction, or a counterpoint to an already complex legacy.
And yet, Arun Shourie’s intervention feels different.
What makes ‘The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts’ so compelling is not just the depth of research—though that, undeniably, is formidable—but the unsettling clarity of its conclusions.
Shourie is not writing as a distant academic or a casual critic; he is engaging Savarkar as someone whose ideas have been selectively inherited, simplified, and, at times, mythologised.
The result is a book that refuses comfort. It challenges both the unquestioning devotee and the casual detractor to slow down and reckon with the contradictions at the heart of Savarkar’s thought.
After years of reading on Savarkar, I did not expect to be surprised. And yet, Shourie manages exactly that. His book makes the act of reading feel necessary again—not as confirmation of what one already believes, but as a genuine intellectual exercise. Whether one ultimately agrees with him or not, his work sharpens the debate and raises its standard.
In that sense, Shourie’s book earns its place alongside the most important writings on Savarkar—not because it closes the discussion, but because it reopens it, rigorously and unapologetically.
And that alone makes every page worth the effort.
Most recommended.
Long before today’s noisy polarities hardened, his books and essays shaped how I first approached the idea of Hindutva—sharp, sceptical, grounded in argument rather than slogans. That is why his recent turn, and especially his new book on Savarkar, feels less like a routine intervention and more like a reckoning.
Arun Shourie was among the earliest authors who decisively influenced how I understood Hindutva. Today, however, he is often described—sometimes admiringly, sometimes with irritation—as a Hindutva thinker who has drifted off-script.
Being anti-establishment was always central to Shourie’s public persona, something he carried almost as a mark of honour. After 2014, though, that contrarian impulse seems to have intensified, taking on a sharper, more confrontational edge.
What makes this shift particularly striking is that, in pushing back so forcefully, Shourie now appears to be questioning—if not actively dismantling—the very intellectual and ideological framework he himself helped construct over decades, especially since the 1980s.
This tome has therefore drawn attention not only because of its subject, but because of its author. The spotlight falls as much on Shourie as it does on Savarkar.
Even before I delve deep uinto the work, I must admit that this tome leaves little doubt that Shourie is unwilling to treat Savarkar with reverence. Instead, he subjects him to a close, often unsparing scrutiny.
One of the book’s central moves is to highlight the tension between contemporary Hindutva beliefs and Savarkar’s own positions.
Shourie points out, for instance, that Savarkar favoured ‘gau palan’ (the practical rearing of cattle) over ‘gau pujan’ (ritual veneration), even arguing that excessive cow adoration had led to what he called ‘“rashtra ki buddhi-hatya kaa paap”‘—the sin of destroying the nation’s intelligence.
Savarkar’s views on food further confuse any attempt to turn him into a simple cultural symbol. He insisted that eating beef or pork was not a religious issue at all, but a matter of personal choice and bodily need. In his own words, cattle should ordinarily not be consumed because of their utility, yet he saw no inherent moral or religious prohibition against eating their meat—no different, he argued, from practices common in England or America.
By assembling these positions, Shourie forces an uncomfortable question into the open: how neatly does Savarkar actually fit into the ideological mould he is often placed in today? Whether one agrees with Shourie or not, the book makes it clear that this is less an act of devotion than an act of interrogation—and perhaps, in some ways, self-interrogation as well.
For starters, Shourie positions himself not as a celebrant and not even primarily as a defender, but as an examiner of records—someone impatient with slogans, allergic to mythmaking, and deeply suspicious of moral shortcuts. This is not a book that asks whether Savarkar should be admired or condemned. It asks something far more uncomfortable: what do the documents actually say, and why have we become so careless with them?
From the first pages, Shourie’s tone is unmistakable. He is not interested in atmospherics or ideological mood music. His method is accumulative, almost relentless. Letters, petitions, court records, contemporaneous accounts, internal contradictions in secondary sources—everything is dragged into the light.
The book insists, repeatedly, that opinions about Savarkar have been allowed to harden into certainties without being tested against primary evidence. Shourie’s irritation is not merely political; it is epistemic. He is angry at how history is handled.
What makes this book distinctive is that it does not try to replace one icon with another. Shourie does not attempt to recast Savarkar as a misunderstood saint or a flawless revolutionary. Instead, he dismantles the process through which Savarkar has been flattened into a caricature—either demonized as a proto-fascist or sanctified as a nationalist hero—by returning obsessively to chronology, context, and causality.
The argument is not that Savarkar was always right, but that he has been consistently misrepresented, often through messy scholarship masquerading as moral certainty.
The central battleground, inevitably, is Savarkar’s petitions for clemency. Shourie treats these documents not as embarrassing footnotes to be explained away, but as texts to be read closely, in their legal, historical, and psychological context. He shows how similar petitions were routine, even encouraged, under colonial law; how their language followed standardized formats; how selective quotation has been used to imply moral collapse where none is self-evident.
What emerges is not a simple exoneration, but a reframing. The question shifts from “Why did Savarkar beg?” to “Why are we reading these documents as confessions rather than as legal instruments?”
This shift matters because it exposes a larger habit in Indian political discourse: the tendency to retroactively moralize actions without reconstructing the constraints under which they were taken. Shourie is particularly sharp in pointing out how Savarkar is judged by standards never applied consistently to others—how revolutionary violence, compromise, silence, or tactical retreat are interpreted differently depending on who performs them.
The book quietly but firmly accuses generations of commentators of double standards, and it does so not through rhetoric but through juxtaposition of facts.
What complicates the reading experience is Shourie’s refusal to soften his prose. He names names. He points out errors with a prosecutor’s precision. He quotes critics against themselves, sometimes at length. For some readers, this tone will feel abrasive, even obsessive. But it is inseparable from the book’s purpose. ‘The New Icon’ is not written to persuade the undecided; it is written to confront what Shourie sees as a culture of intellectual laziness. His real antagonist is not any single ideological camp, but the casualness with which serious claims are made about historical figures.
At the same time, the book reveals something deeply postcolonial in its anxiety. Savarkar’s afterlife, Shourie suggests, is less about Savarkar than about contemporary India’s struggle to narrate itself. The following questions arise:
1) Who gets remembered as legitimate?
2) Whose nationalism is deemed respectable?
3) Which kinds of resistance are retroactively endorsed, and which are sanitized or erased?
Savarkar becomes a fault line, not because his life offers easy answers, but because it exposes unresolved tensions in how India understands its past.
Shourie is particularly effective when he dissects the claim that Savarkar was marginal or irrelevant after his release. By tracing Savarkar’s intellectual influence, organizational work, and political interventions, he challenges the narrative that imprisonment ended Savarkar’s historical significance.
Again, this is not romanticized. Savarkar’s ideas are presented as consequential, controversial, and sometimes troubling—but not negligible. The book insists that influence cannot be measured solely by official power or public adulation.
What the book does not do—and this is crucial—is offer emotional closure. There is no final synthesis that resolves Savarkar into a morally coherent figure.
Shourie seems uninterested in such closure. Instead, the book leaves Savarkar where history often leaves its most difficult figures: suspended between admiration and unease. The insistence is not that Savarkar must be liked, but that he must be read accurately.
This insistence extends to Shourie’s critique of academic and journalistic practices. He repeatedly exposes how secondary sources cite one another in circular fashion, how footnotes become shields rather than safeguards, how interpretation hardens into dogma through repetition. In this sense,
‘The New Icon’ is as much a book about historiography as it is about Savarkar. It asks uncomfortable questions about who gets to write history, how reputations are constructed, and how easily intellectual authority can substitute for evidence.
Reading the book is not a smooth experience. It demands patience. It expects the reader to follow chains of argument, to care about dates, phrasing, omissions. Those looking for narrative elegance or psychological portraiture may find it dry. But this dryness is intentional. Shourie’s style mirrors his thesis: facts matter, even when they are inconvenient, even when they complicate our preferred stories.
What lingered with me after finishing the book was not a changed opinion about Savarkar so much as a heightened suspicion of certainty. The book makes it difficult to accept easy moral binaries. It shows how reputations are not discovered but assembled—through selection, emphasis, and repetition.
Savarkar’s transformation into a “new icon,” Shourie argues, is not a spontaneous phenomenon but a reaction to decades of distortion. Whether one agrees with Shourie’s conclusions or not, the process he exposes is hard to ignore.
In the end, ‘The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts’ is not a comforting book. It does not flatter the reader’s ideological preferences. It does not offer a hero to cheer or a villain to denounce with clean conscience. Instead, it offers something rarer and more unsettling: a demand for intellectual discipline. It insists that before we judge the past, we owe it the courtesy of accuracy.
Savarkar emerges not as a resolved symbol but as a reminder of how fragile historical truth can be in a polarized culture. Shourie’s book may not convince everyone, but it succeeds in something arguably more important. It makes careless certainty feel irresponsible.
And in a public discourse increasingly driven by slogans rather than scrutiny, that may be its most enduring intervention.
To conclude, I must admit that I have read Savarkar through several lenses—admiring, critical, archival, polemical. From Dhananjay Keer’s early, sympathetic biography to A.G. Noorani’s sharply sceptical ‘Savarkar and Hindutva’, from Savarkar’s own writings like ‘Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?’ to the monumental, archive-driven biographies by Vikram Sampath—’Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past (1883–1924)’ and ‘Savarkar: A Contested Legacy (1924–1966)’—the figure has never lacked interpreters. Each of these works adds a layer, a correction, or a counterpoint to an already complex legacy.
And yet, Arun Shourie’s intervention feels different.
What makes ‘The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts’ so compelling is not just the depth of research—though that, undeniably, is formidable—but the unsettling clarity of its conclusions.
Shourie is not writing as a distant academic or a casual critic; he is engaging Savarkar as someone whose ideas have been selectively inherited, simplified, and, at times, mythologised.
The result is a book that refuses comfort. It challenges both the unquestioning devotee and the casual detractor to slow down and reckon with the contradictions at the heart of Savarkar’s thought.
After years of reading on Savarkar, I did not expect to be surprised. And yet, Shourie manages exactly that. His book makes the act of reading feel necessary again—not as confirmation of what one already believes, but as a genuine intellectual exercise. Whether one ultimately agrees with him or not, his work sharpens the debate and raises its standard.
In that sense, Shourie’s book earns its place alongside the most important writings on Savarkar—not because it closes the discussion, but because it reopens it, rigorously and unapologetically.
And that alone makes every page worth the effort.
Most recommended.
January 26, 2025
The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts by Arun Shourie
Cover: Sparsh Raj Singh
Being a fan of Shourie’s caustic humour, dry sense of awareness and cutting quotes, this one just seems a bit lacking in execution, that after a while it becomes unclear that what exactly is Savarkar being accused of? Are his changing/evolving views a moral deficiency? Is he what Nehru/Jinnah is to INC/Muslim League or is he an ideologue closer to Gandhi/Bose?, or is his only failing that he was not a Congress Party member. His imprisonment is brushed aside as an uneventful event not of any consequence, only that it ossified his hatred of Afghan/Pathan/Muslim guards but had no qualms about the other guard Irish Barrie Baba.
At some point in the book, it made me want to read more about Savarkar than putting me off him. Memes being the only source of my full Savarkar knowledge, I was a bit surprised by the breadth of his contributions. He outlived his peers, and the seed that he sowed in early 1930, finally germinated some 50 years after his death. Nehru and Savarkar meet eye to eye on more issues than not, with the biggest ones being a single language and need for a strong federal state.
The leaps of judgement, and bad faith turns of phrases does not add much value to either the believer or an undecided centrist. His use of the “beg” quoted over and over again just to paint an image of his spinelessness, but it makes more of the case otherwise. His comparisons as a failed Mahatma is as much a compliment as an insult, and the fact that it can be construed either ways is commendable.
If the author wanted to criticise the BJP, in its inability to govern, pusillanimity in reforms, one size fits all corporate model of party functions, negative politics, calling regionalism secession, religion in election, caste based cadres, pro reservation, appropriating murderers, washing machine defections, Uniparty approach, economic mismanagement, ceaseless inflation, juking the numbers, top down dictatorial approach, bad infrastructure, taxing the unrepresented, freebie culture, TikTok PR, and absence of a feedback mechanism, then it’d be a more enlightening conversation. Only in the last part the author touch upon the latest plague armed with a selfie stick and “Hi Guys” called Religious Tourism, but only for a few lines.
A book neither for the zealot not an abuser, but somehow would be bought and left unread by both.
Personal Rating - 3/5
Cover: Sparsh Raj Singh
Being a fan of Shourie’s caustic humour, dry sense of awareness and cutting quotes, this one just seems a bit lacking in execution, that after a while it becomes unclear that what exactly is Savarkar being accused of? Are his changing/evolving views a moral deficiency? Is he what Nehru/Jinnah is to INC/Muslim League or is he an ideologue closer to Gandhi/Bose?, or is his only failing that he was not a Congress Party member. His imprisonment is brushed aside as an uneventful event not of any consequence, only that it ossified his hatred of Afghan/Pathan/Muslim guards but had no qualms about the other guard Irish Barrie Baba.
At some point in the book, it made me want to read more about Savarkar than putting me off him. Memes being the only source of my full Savarkar knowledge, I was a bit surprised by the breadth of his contributions. He outlived his peers, and the seed that he sowed in early 1930, finally germinated some 50 years after his death. Nehru and Savarkar meet eye to eye on more issues than not, with the biggest ones being a single language and need for a strong federal state.
The leaps of judgement, and bad faith turns of phrases does not add much value to either the believer or an undecided centrist. His use of the “beg” quoted over and over again just to paint an image of his spinelessness, but it makes more of the case otherwise. His comparisons as a failed Mahatma is as much a compliment as an insult, and the fact that it can be construed either ways is commendable.
If the author wanted to criticise the BJP, in its inability to govern, pusillanimity in reforms, one size fits all corporate model of party functions, negative politics, calling regionalism secession, religion in election, caste based cadres, pro reservation, appropriating murderers, washing machine defections, Uniparty approach, economic mismanagement, ceaseless inflation, juking the numbers, top down dictatorial approach, bad infrastructure, taxing the unrepresented, freebie culture, TikTok PR, and absence of a feedback mechanism, then it’d be a more enlightening conversation. Only in the last part the author touch upon the latest plague armed with a selfie stick and “Hi Guys” called Religious Tourism, but only for a few lines.
A book neither for the zealot not an abuser, but somehow would be bought and left unread by both.
Personal Rating - 3/5
February 21, 2025
Author dives deep into facts to subscribe to his view that Savarkar has been lying most of the time..so he becomes a bit repetitive in his narrative..Hindu Mahasabha, the then equivalent of BJP could hardly win 1% of seats politically as did BJP of 1986..so now what with BJP being so popular both socially and politically no wonder many consider Savarakar “Veer”..bulldozing the facts..just like Yogi Adityanath recently stating that Ganga water at Triveni Sangam is drink worthy bulldozing all reports that are to contrary..author furnishes extensive evidence to portray Savarkar as a staunch Hindutva supporter without scruples..
April 20, 2025
I began reading this book a bit skeptical of my ability to finish it. If you have had any exposure to Arun Shourie’s writing, you know him to be someone who often starts well but ends up getting lost in the details. I have given up on reading at least one of his books because of his tendency to reproduce complete passages of dreary legalese in pursuit of his overall objective. This book, however, could be the first time that this method actually works for him.
V.D. Savarkar is an enigmatic figure about whose life and achievements I was only vaguely aware before reading this book. “Freedom at Midnight” was my main source of information then, and that book didn’t have many good things to say about him, as anyone who has read it will be aware. Shourie, however, has presented a much more balanced and nuanced view of his quarry. I say quarry because he has gone after Savarkar in a way only a hunter would and, like a prosecutor at a trial, ripped the veil off and exposed his Janus face to the world. (Please read the book for the details. I don’t want to play spoiler!)
Shourie, of course, is famous for this. No one in power was safe when, as a writer for a leading English daily, he regularly trained his guns on Indian politicians and their corruption in the ‘70s and ‘80s. What defies understanding, however, is why, then, did Shourie go and join a political party and become its minister in the 1990s? One that was accused of corruption and exposed in one of the first TV sting operations of modern India, that too. To top it all, it was a Hindu right-wing party that Shourie chose to join, a party that preached the same Hindutva that Shourie is so set against in this book. Didn't he find anything objectionable about them at that time? In fact, isn’t he, through his various speeches, interviews, and writings, guilty of propagating the same Hindutva philosophy during his time in the BJP?
The only way to reconcile all this is by taking this book to be Arun Shourie’s expiation. He wants to dissociate himself from that party and is deeply sorry that he has helped unleash the forces of intolerance in our country. If that is true, there should have been at least an explicit sentence or two about it in the book, if not a whole chapter. If not true, then the purported reason for writing the book doesn’t make sense. No ‘bhakt’ will change his or her mind by reading it (if they ever get around to it, that is), and the type of reader who will read it, doesn’t need much convincing anyway.
My review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t write something about the Savarkar who is introduced to us in the first chapter - the social reformer, the rationalist, the progressive writer, who fearlessly castigates Hindu society for its many ills (someone in his place would have to fear for his/her life in today’s environment). This is truly a heroic figure, one I quite admired and enjoyed reading about. Wish the rest of his personality had been more like this. Then we could all have agreed about his place in history.
Previous note -
This book is turning out to be one heck of an eye-opener. V.D. Savarkar was not the man I used to think he was. In fact, if not for the use of Sanskritised language (the author has translated from the original works of Savarkar in other languages), I would have thought it’s the rationalist Nehru’s quotes that I was reading! I am tempted to share some of these here as I progress through the book but will refrain as it might get me banned or something (Some of the material is quite controversial!).
V.D. Savarkar is an enigmatic figure about whose life and achievements I was only vaguely aware before reading this book. “Freedom at Midnight” was my main source of information then, and that book didn’t have many good things to say about him, as anyone who has read it will be aware. Shourie, however, has presented a much more balanced and nuanced view of his quarry. I say quarry because he has gone after Savarkar in a way only a hunter would and, like a prosecutor at a trial, ripped the veil off and exposed his Janus face to the world. (Please read the book for the details. I don’t want to play spoiler!)
Shourie, of course, is famous for this. No one in power was safe when, as a writer for a leading English daily, he regularly trained his guns on Indian politicians and their corruption in the ‘70s and ‘80s. What defies understanding, however, is why, then, did Shourie go and join a political party and become its minister in the 1990s? One that was accused of corruption and exposed in one of the first TV sting operations of modern India, that too. To top it all, it was a Hindu right-wing party that Shourie chose to join, a party that preached the same Hindutva that Shourie is so set against in this book. Didn't he find anything objectionable about them at that time? In fact, isn’t he, through his various speeches, interviews, and writings, guilty of propagating the same Hindutva philosophy during his time in the BJP?
The only way to reconcile all this is by taking this book to be Arun Shourie’s expiation. He wants to dissociate himself from that party and is deeply sorry that he has helped unleash the forces of intolerance in our country. If that is true, there should have been at least an explicit sentence or two about it in the book, if not a whole chapter. If not true, then the purported reason for writing the book doesn’t make sense. No ‘bhakt’ will change his or her mind by reading it (if they ever get around to it, that is), and the type of reader who will read it, doesn’t need much convincing anyway.
My review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t write something about the Savarkar who is introduced to us in the first chapter - the social reformer, the rationalist, the progressive writer, who fearlessly castigates Hindu society for its many ills (someone in his place would have to fear for his/her life in today’s environment). This is truly a heroic figure, one I quite admired and enjoyed reading about. Wish the rest of his personality had been more like this. Then we could all have agreed about his place in history.
Previous note -
This book is turning out to be one heck of an eye-opener. V.D. Savarkar was not the man I used to think he was. In fact, if not for the use of Sanskritised language (the author has translated from the original works of Savarkar in other languages), I would have thought it’s the rationalist Nehru’s quotes that I was reading! I am tempted to share some of these here as I progress through the book but will refrain as it might get me banned or something (Some of the material is quite controversial!).
Read
April 1, 2025Save Hinduism from Hindutva is Arun Shourie's earnest plea.
Hinduism is the inner search, Hindutva is the means for social control and state domination.
Nothing new under the sun. Heard this a million times from the vacuous opposition and a Wog media that seeks Western validation all the time.
What a volte face? A hitjob by the Punjabi Brahmin on the Chitpavan Brahmin.
Admittedly, a very serious and indepth study. This is not a hagiography like other writers, but it is clear that Shourie is biased against Savarkar from the get-go. Not that Savarkar is a paragon of virtue, but the vitriol and hatred the author seems to have for the current dispensation for not giving him an important position seems to have transferred to Savarkar. In that august attempt, he speaks like the Left, Islamist critics or the Congress under its brainless ogres seem to vilify and caricature Savarkar every day.
Whatever his faults, I think Savarkar was genuinely patriotic and definitely empathetic to the nonsense and appeasement spewed by the Congress of that era to the present day. Admittedly, Shourie has shown me many warts in Savarkar's persona, many of which I was aware of and some I wasn't. Yet, abandoning Dhingra, Bhagat Singh and fraternising with Khilafat types and blind appeasement without any rationale are admittedly Gandhi's faults.
Rajagopalachari who I've admired since reading his Dharmic works as a child came up with the nonsensical Rajaji plan admittedly at the supreme father of ahimsa's behest. Indian tragedy that there were no strong leaders in the Congress after Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Gokhale who could have steered us in a slightly different direction. But what will be had to be. Que Sera Sera. The Shourie tendency comes from the same playbook that the distinguished Mr. Swamy and Yeshwant Sinha seem to have adopted. Prashasti or Qaseeda for the chosen master. Well, if you want to tell us tales about Hindu perfidy, the author needs to add himself to the list. Democracy and freedom of speech are still evident because of the very religion Savarkar sought to glorify and Shourie, a former so-called RW and nationalist icon seeks to vilify.
Hinduism is the inner search, Hindutva is the means for social control and state domination.
Nothing new under the sun. Heard this a million times from the vacuous opposition and a Wog media that seeks Western validation all the time.
What a volte face? A hitjob by the Punjabi Brahmin on the Chitpavan Brahmin.
Admittedly, a very serious and indepth study. This is not a hagiography like other writers, but it is clear that Shourie is biased against Savarkar from the get-go. Not that Savarkar is a paragon of virtue, but the vitriol and hatred the author seems to have for the current dispensation for not giving him an important position seems to have transferred to Savarkar. In that august attempt, he speaks like the Left, Islamist critics or the Congress under its brainless ogres seem to vilify and caricature Savarkar every day.
Whatever his faults, I think Savarkar was genuinely patriotic and definitely empathetic to the nonsense and appeasement spewed by the Congress of that era to the present day. Admittedly, Shourie has shown me many warts in Savarkar's persona, many of which I was aware of and some I wasn't. Yet, abandoning Dhingra, Bhagat Singh and fraternising with Khilafat types and blind appeasement without any rationale are admittedly Gandhi's faults.
Rajagopalachari who I've admired since reading his Dharmic works as a child came up with the nonsensical Rajaji plan admittedly at the supreme father of ahimsa's behest. Indian tragedy that there were no strong leaders in the Congress after Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Gokhale who could have steered us in a slightly different direction. But what will be had to be. Que Sera Sera. The Shourie tendency comes from the same playbook that the distinguished Mr. Swamy and Yeshwant Sinha seem to have adopted. Prashasti or Qaseeda for the chosen master. Well, if you want to tell us tales about Hindu perfidy, the author needs to add himself to the list. Democracy and freedom of speech are still evident because of the very religion Savarkar sought to glorify and Shourie, a former so-called RW and nationalist icon seeks to vilify.
May 8, 2025
I consider this book to be a difficult one to review. Anyone reviewing books such as this one must set aside their preconceived notions of the subject (in this case, Savarkar) and only focus on the material contained inside, the author’s treatment, and the writing style.
Arun Shourie’s approach is unique. Rather than writing a polemical biography or a hagiography, he opted to add his views to Savarkar’s voice. The book quotes Savarkar’s writing and speeches extensively. While Arun Shourie adds his voice to the analysis, you can interpret Savarkar’s words and actions for yourself.
People have written much about Savarkar. Was he a genuine social reformer who believed in equality for Hindus? He did not consider Muslims to be part of the equation. Was he a genuine iconoclast, who pierced the myths of Hindu tradition, or did he just restrict himself to making speeches and writing on such matters? Read his words, and draw your conclusions.
The material covering his relationship with the British, his criticism of Gandhi, his insistence that Hindus and Muslims, etc., are fascinating, as are his essays and speeches on ‘Hindutva.’
Whether you agree with his philosophy or not, no one can deny his ability to influence others to take action while he stays away from the battlefront. Savarkar’s interpretation of Indian history is curious and strange. I disagree with his writing on Indian history, as it revolved around the myths he wished to create.
Savarkar’s essays and speeches also reveal his fascination with violence, even though he did not engage in such acts. Anyone who analyzes the speeches and actions of today’s leaders will understand Savarkar’s impact on them.
Finally, Savarkar’s words reveal that he was a complex man, and I urge people to read this book if they wish to go beyond the myths surrounding the man.
Per a book review in Caravan Magazine, one of the book’s shortcomings is that Arun Shourie does not explain why he changed from a Savarkar admirer to a Savarkar critic. I agree with the reviewer’s statement. Arun Shourie’s journey from admirer to critic will be fascinating.
Arun Shourie’s approach is unique. Rather than writing a polemical biography or a hagiography, he opted to add his views to Savarkar’s voice. The book quotes Savarkar’s writing and speeches extensively. While Arun Shourie adds his voice to the analysis, you can interpret Savarkar’s words and actions for yourself.
People have written much about Savarkar. Was he a genuine social reformer who believed in equality for Hindus? He did not consider Muslims to be part of the equation. Was he a genuine iconoclast, who pierced the myths of Hindu tradition, or did he just restrict himself to making speeches and writing on such matters? Read his words, and draw your conclusions.
The material covering his relationship with the British, his criticism of Gandhi, his insistence that Hindus and Muslims, etc., are fascinating, as are his essays and speeches on ‘Hindutva.’
Whether you agree with his philosophy or not, no one can deny his ability to influence others to take action while he stays away from the battlefront. Savarkar’s interpretation of Indian history is curious and strange. I disagree with his writing on Indian history, as it revolved around the myths he wished to create.
Savarkar’s essays and speeches also reveal his fascination with violence, even though he did not engage in such acts. Anyone who analyzes the speeches and actions of today’s leaders will understand Savarkar’s impact on them.
Finally, Savarkar’s words reveal that he was a complex man, and I urge people to read this book if they wish to go beyond the myths surrounding the man.
Per a book review in Caravan Magazine, one of the book’s shortcomings is that Arun Shourie does not explain why he changed from a Savarkar admirer to a Savarkar critic. I agree with the reviewer’s statement. Arun Shourie’s journey from admirer to critic will be fascinating.
September 11, 2025
If this book is a hit job, then it is a very well-executed one. It is iconoclasm at its best, assisted by the tools of academic heft, extensive citations, and a single-minded focus. It is, therefore, a deeply political book, one that will evoke extreme reactions, ranging from admiration to outright dismissal as biased or the product of a frustrated mind.
Arun Shourie, a scholar, former editor, and cabinet minister, relies on Savarkar’s own writings rather than the hagiographies penned by his admirers. The book opens with a chapter that introduces us to the rationalist Savarkar, whose words—if spoken today—could easily provoke the wrath of religion. What follows are chapters on his attempted escape from the porthole at Marseilles, his supposed role in inspiring revolutionary spirit among followers in London, his meeting with Bose and connection to the INA, his wholehearted cooperation with the British during the Quit India Movement, his theory of Hindutva, his criticism of Buddhism, his sutra for the state, and, of course, his hatred for Gandhi.
This is not a traditional biography. Rather, Shourie demystifies the aura around Savarkar, focusing on specific myths and systematically deconstructing them.
It is a powerful and provocative read and I highly recommend it.
Arun Shourie, a scholar, former editor, and cabinet minister, relies on Savarkar’s own writings rather than the hagiographies penned by his admirers. The book opens with a chapter that introduces us to the rationalist Savarkar, whose words—if spoken today—could easily provoke the wrath of religion. What follows are chapters on his attempted escape from the porthole at Marseilles, his supposed role in inspiring revolutionary spirit among followers in London, his meeting with Bose and connection to the INA, his wholehearted cooperation with the British during the Quit India Movement, his theory of Hindutva, his criticism of Buddhism, his sutra for the state, and, of course, his hatred for Gandhi.
This is not a traditional biography. Rather, Shourie demystifies the aura around Savarkar, focusing on specific myths and systematically deconstructing them.
It is a powerful and provocative read and I highly recommend it.
October 6, 2025
It is important for us to understand that there is much written material available which might be written with malice, lies, and simply cloaking reality. The current state of India is not encouraging where inspiration and sense of pride is being sought in past. As a society, we must be forward looking and take good actions right now. There's no point in seeking refuge in past.
This person wrote a hyperbole for himself under pseudonym. And canvassed for himself. The book sheds light on both positives and negatives of this icon. I resonate with his idea of caste annihilation but the religious divide and India for Hindus only is far fetched idea. (The term "Hindi" includes everyone living east to the Sindhu Valley.)
Our forefathers never envisioned a monolithic India. The beauty of India lies in its diversity - of culture, people, language, food, clothes, and faith. There's no threat to Hinduism if others coexist. The Hinduism should be of peaceful coexistence. It must provide protective cover to all minorities, like a elder brother rather than fighting with siblings.
This person wrote a hyperbole for himself under pseudonym. And canvassed for himself. The book sheds light on both positives and negatives of this icon. I resonate with his idea of caste annihilation but the religious divide and India for Hindus only is far fetched idea. (The term "Hindi" includes everyone living east to the Sindhu Valley.)
Our forefathers never envisioned a monolithic India. The beauty of India lies in its diversity - of culture, people, language, food, clothes, and faith. There's no threat to Hinduism if others coexist. The Hinduism should be of peaceful coexistence. It must provide protective cover to all minorities, like a elder brother rather than fighting with siblings.
July 3, 2025
I have always enjoyed reading Arun Shourie’s books. I have found him to have researched the subject of his writings well and deeply. His writings have also carried his editor’s incisiveness. In the latest instance, the author critically examines the writings and the personality of the Hindutva icon - Savarkar. He highlights the complex personality of the gentleman as well as his views on Hinduism and Hindutva through his analytical research of his many writings.
July 5, 2025
The book gives a well researched understanding of Savarkar as a person against Savarkar as an icon, and its truly an eye opener. however , the book (if you can call it that, since its more like comparative notes) is a tough read because of the comparative nature as well as a person like Savarkar himself...
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