Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

by Vikram Sampath

The above controversial illustration is often held against Savarkar as him having advocated the rape and molestation of Muslim women in contemporary India. The context in which this has been stated, albeit uncomfortable in the way it has been presented, makes it clear that this was not a prescription for current action but a hypothesis on what could possibly have been a better fate for the Hindu women if their menfolk had instilled similar fright in their opponents about the fate of their womenfolk in the event of a defeat. The same is explained further by him: Suppose, if from the earliest Muslim invasion of India, the Hindus also, whenever they were victors on the battlefields, had decided to pay the Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punished them in some other ways, i.e., by conversion even with force, and then absorbed them in their fold, then? Then with this horrible apprehension at their heart they would have desisted from their evil designs against any Hindu lady. If they had taken such a fright in the first two or three centuries, millions and millions of luckless Hindu ladies would have been saved all their indignities, loss of their own religion, rapes, ravages and other unimaginable persecutions. Our woman-world would not have suffered such a tremendous numerical loss, which means their future progeny would not have been lost permanently to Hinduism and the Muslim population could not have thrived so audaciously. Without any increase in their womenfolk the Mus...