Savarkar -Savouring a Forbidden Fruit

Savouring a Forbidden  Fruit

Savarkar's  stormy life oscillates    between glorifying hagiography to reproachful demonisation. Bajpayee got a plaque installed in his honour in Cellular Jail, where he was incarcerated, in 2004. It was removed by Mani Shankar Iyer next year to be reinstalled in 2015 by Mr Modi  when BJP came to power. We had gone to PortBlair in 2005, when Sunami struck. But what remains as abiding memory is the light and sound program inside the cellular jail, capturing the bestial manner in which  the British used to treat political prisoners like Savarkar. Vikram's vivid account brought tears to my eyes. . 

An atheist, iconoclast, Savarkar  strongly opposed caste system and dismissed cow worship as superstition. He was also a sensitive poet and a prolific writer, whose scribbling on the walls of cellular jail bear ample  testimony to his incredible  talent and jest for justice. It  is rare to find a combination of a poet's heart and a revolutionary's  brain in a single man  .Vikram Sampath writes this masterpiece , covering his life up to 1924.

The American historian Wilford wrote : 'All works of history are interim reports. What people did in the past is not preserved in amber , immutable through the ages. Each generation presumes to find patterns that illuminate both past and present'. Sampath tries deftly to find a pattern in the writings of Savarkar, particularly his grand construct of Hinduvta and First War of Independence (1857) . 

Gandhi was horrified to meet this  Chitpawan Brahmin cooking prawn when  they  met  first  in India House in 1906, and refused to partake a meal.  Violence as a tool was their Ideological divide. Mazzini was Savarkar's role model , Tolstoy's commitment to  nonviolence was Gandhiji's gopel. But its not such a simple binary  script . The  second  volume capturing his  alleged role in Gandhi's  assassination would be eagerly awaited.