The idea for his best known book, Hindutva! Who is a Hindu? also germinated in the island jail, in which he defined a Hindu as ‘a person who regards this land of Bharatvarsh from the Indus to the Seas as his Fatherland as well as his Holy Land, that is the cradle of his religion.’ Savarkar distinguished between punyabhoomi (holy land) and pitribhoomi or matribhoomi (fatherland or motherland), which when extrapolated meant that ‘non-Hindus’ couldn’t call India their nation. Yet, as we shall see subsequently, Savarkar contradicted his postulation on several occasions.
