Down south, communal riots broke out in the Nizam’s domain in the town of Gulbarga in 1924. Nearly fifteen Hindu temples were attacked, idols broken … - Vikram Sampath

These two volumes however are in no way an apology for Savarkar. They do not take on themselves the lofty goal of correcting historical wrongs done to a national figure. If these do happen, they would be purely coincidental and not intended to be so. Stripping off any personal biases, the records must be allowed to speak for themselves. This, to me is more a historian’s burden and a duty—to illuminate the extant records and on the basis of that let the discerning reader make up her own mind. While all the above-stated allegations have been dealt with in this two-volume biography, the intent is not for me to become Savarkar’s mouthpiece or his lawyer, as I am sure he deserves better. As a historian committed to my profession of an unending quest for the truth, bringing to light the evidences and documents in a conscientious manner is what I have honestly tried to attempt. The jury is of course out there to decide if I have succeeded in what truly seemed like a herculean task.

Legend has it that an ancient Shiva temple existed at Thirunavaya, believed to have been consecrated by Parashurama and among the 108 major shrines for Lord Shiva in Kerala. But pilgrims are unable to find this temple at Thirunavaya. A Shiva Linga and pedestal were excavated from a location there in 2003, but were hastily buried again, claims Dinesh.42 After its destruction and subsequent neglect over time, the site was used by the British to establish a tile factory.

I was thereafter invited for talks and lectures at several places and during one such exposition on the Interregnum period of Haidar and Tipu, when I began quoting verbatim some of the letters of Tipu, all hell broke loose in the hall. A section of the hitherto civilized audience broke up in sloganeering, hurling paper rockets at the podium and forcing the organizers to hurriedly terminate the session and usher me inside. Amidst the din, a man reached out to my bewildered and hassled father who sat among the audience with a terse message: ‘He is your only son, advise him well if you wish to have him around you for long!’ If this kerfuffle felt like a scene from a Bollywood film, it sadly was not, but was part of my father and my lived experience. The aggression of that evening stunned us, deeply impacting my mother’s already precarious health. In our naivety, we believed that historiography meant telling the truth as it was. But its intense sociopolitical weaponization was something that we were both unaware of and yet to be confronted with.