Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

by Vikram Sampath

But as history makes itself amenable to be retold from varied perspectives, especially those of the victor, Savarkar’s attempt here was to establish that sense of pride in place of that of shame and apology about one’s past. As he states: How the histories written not only by foreign historians or those who are avowedly inimical to us, but even by our own people, ignore the glorious episodes of exceptional valour and monumental successes of the Hindus and in their stead, catalogue only the calamities that befell them and present them as the only true history of the Hindus, because they were never fearlessly written from the pure and simple Hindu standpoint . . . Generally speaking in all histories, especially in the history text-books used in schools, the writers invariably jump from an account of the Hunnish onslaught to the first successful Muslim campaign on Sindh, without writing even a line or two about the intervening long period of these hundred years or so. Next follow in quick succession the detailed narration [sic] of Muslim invasions one after another, so that a common reader, especially a pupil, catches an impression, which is very often carried even in his later life, that the history of the Hindus is nothing but a doleful tale of foreign subjugation and national defeats. Our enemies have publicized these false impressions as established facts all over the world for the last two or three centuries. For instance, a man like the late Dr. Ambedkar, burning with h...