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 … - Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

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!

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.

Savarkar is widely reviled in Indian history as an apostle of hate; through a reading of Hindutva I argue that he might better be understood as a spurned lover . . . Hindutva in its time was also a reminder to a Hindu community that even if Gandhi had left the political milieu, there was no need to worry. A political Hindu and a true nationalist was back and ready to lead India, even from behind prison walls. Hindutva was a pugilistic punch thrown against Gandhi in the competitive political ring for national leadership.