Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Quotes

Most secularists pretend not to know [the] unambiguous position of Savarkar’s (in many cases, they really don’t know, for Hindu-baiting is usually done without reference to primary sources). Likewise, Savarkar’s plea for caste intermarriage to promote the oneness of Hindu society is usually ignored in order to keep up the pretence that he was a reactionary on caste, an “upper-caste racist” (as Gyan Pandey puts it), and what not. There are no limits to secularist dishonesty... [It] is just another case of secularist justice: Hindu are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

The streak of rationality and questioning tradition too came early to him. Once a multicoloured book on the shelf at home caught his attention and he decided to read it, despite it being in Sanskrit, of which he understood very little. When Damodarpant discovered that his young son was reading the Aranyaka s he was enraged. There was a superstition that reading the Aranyaka s at home forebodes evil for the reader’s worldly life and they needed to be read in seclusion in the woods. This left a lasting question in Vinayak’s mind. How could someone as intelligent as his father believe in such superstitions?, he wondered. Mocking the belief, he continued reading the book without anyone’s knowledge and proved to himself that this was just a fanciful and concocted tale.

We are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us are Jains and some Jangamas; but Jains or Jangamas—we are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us are monists, some, pantheists; some theists and some atheists. But monotheists or atheists—we are all Hindus and own a common blood. We are not only a nation, but a Jati , a born brotherhood. Nothing else counts, it is after all a question of heart. We feel that the same ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and Chaitanya, Basava and Madhava, of Rohidas and Tiruvelluvar courses throughout Hindudom from vein to vein, pulsates from heart to heart. We feel we are a JATI, a race bound together by the dearest ties of blood and therefore it must be so.

No Muslim woman whether a Begum or a beggar, ever protested against the atrocities committed by their male compatriots; on the contrary they encouraged them to do so and honoured them for it. A Muslim woman did everything in her power to harass such captured or kidnapped Hindu women. Not only in the troubled times of war but even in the intervening periods of peace and even when they themselves lived in the Hindu kingdoms, they enticed and carried away young Hindu girls locked them up in their own houses, or conveyed them to the Muslim centres in Masjids and Mosques. The Muslim women all over India considered it their holy duty to do so.

Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.

Towards the end of 1926, the first English biography of Savarkar titled The Life of Barrister Savarkar was published in Madras under a curious pen name ‘Chitragupta’. In Hindu mythology, Chitragupta is the accountant of Yama, the God of Death, who keeps a meticulous debit and credit account of every soul’s sins and virtues. There have been various allusions about who the author is—from Congress leader C. Rajagopalachari, the revolutionary V.V.S. Aiyar to Savarkar himself writing under a pseudonym. The identity of the author continues to remain a mystery.

Despite being born in an orthodox and religious Chitpawan Brahmin community, Vinayak despised the caste system right from childhood. This has been illustrated in the kinships he developed with children from various castes and strata of society, and how he dined at their homes. At a time when most members of his community forbade sea travel for fear of a loss of caste, Vinayak was among the few Brahmins who travelled to London for his education. He had no qualms about going non-vegetarian as well, unlike most Brahmins of the time. As his political thoughts matured during his long years of incarceration, he penned essays on the abhorrent practice of the caste system and untouchability and how these sapped the nation of all vitality. Advocating a strong case for their total, complete and unconditional eradication at a time when these ideas were not yet a part of the political discourse popularized by either Gandhi or Ambedkar, he was the first to envision a casteless India.

Every person is a Hindu who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as Holyland, i.e. the land of the origin of his religion (…) Consequently the so-called aboriginal or hill tribes also are Hindus: because India is their Fatherland as well as their Holyland of whatever form of religion or worship they follow.

Strange as it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah, instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue, are in complete agreement about it. Both agree, not only agree but insist, that there are two nations in India—one the Muslim nation and the other the Hindu nation. They differ only as regards the terms and conditions on which the two nations should live. Mr. Jinnah says India should be cut up into two, Pakistan and Hindustan, the Muslim nation to occupy Pakistan and the Hindu nation to occupy Hindustan. Mr. Savarkar on the other hand insists that, although there are two nations in India, India shall not be divided into two parts, one for Muslims and the other for the Hindus; that the two nations shall dwell in one country and shall live under the mantle of one single constitution; that the constitution shall be such that the Hindu nation will be enabled to occupy a predominant position that is due to it and the Muslim nation made to live in the position of subordinate co-operation with the Hindu nation.

I was to slowly discover that Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions and a historian’s enigma. He simultaneously means many things to many people. An alleged atheist and a staunch rationalist who strongly opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs and the caste system and dismissed cow worship as mere superstition, Savarkar was also the most vocal political voice for the Hindu community through the entire course of the Indian freedom struggle.... A feted revolutionary who created an intellectual corpus of literature that inspired the revolutionary movement in India for decades, Savarkar was also a passionate and sensitive poet, a prolific writer and playwright, and a fiery orator. ...The social reformer in him strove to dismantle the scourges of untouchability and caste hierarchies, and advocated a unification of Hindu society.

After winning the final battle, when the Muslims rushed violently, like a stormy wind, through Sindh, they went on beheading these Buddhists even more ruthlessly than they did the Vedic Hindus. For, the Vedic Hindus were fighting in groups or individually at every place and so they struck at least a little awe and terror in the minds of the Muslims. But as there was no armed opposition in Buddhist Vihars and Buddhist localities, the Muslims cut them down as easily as they would cut vegetable.

Vande Mataram (Salutations to the Mother!)
In the name of God,
In the name of Bharat Mata,
In the name of all the martyrs that have shed their blood for Bharat Mata,
By the love innate in all men and women, that I bear to the land of my birth,
Wherein lie the sacred ashes of my forefathers, and which is the cradle of my children.
By the tears of the countless mothers for their children whom the foreigner has enslaved, imprisoned, tortured and killed,
Convinced that without Absolute Political Independence or Swarajya my country can never rise to the exalted position among the nations of the earth which is Her due, And convinced also that that Swarajya can never be attained except by the waging of a bloody and relentless war against the Foreigner, solemnly and sincerely swear that I shall from this moment do everything in my power to fight for Independence and place the Lotus Crown of Swaraj on the head of my Mother; And with this object, I join the Abhinav Bharat, the Revolutionary Society of all Hindustan, and swear that I shall ever be true and faithful to this, my solemn Oath, and that I shall obey the orders of this organization (body); If I betray the whole or any part of this solemn Oath, or if I betray this organization (body) or any other working with a similar object, May I be doomed to the fate of a perjurer!

Right from his childhood, Vinayak found the caste system that plagued Hindu society reprehensible. In his own little way he broke these barriers. Despite being an upper-caste Brahmin, and a landlord at that, all his childhood friends were from poor backgrounds and belonged to the supposed lower castes.

The world was peopled by robber nations, and there was nothing to choose between one robber and another, except when India stood to gain by such choice. In such a world it was foolish to talk of moral force and force of world public opinion.

Let it be known that our country can never be liberated until and unless England is involved in a world war and it's military power is shaken.