Savarkar Quotes

“On 1 August 1939, Savarkar spoke at a public meeting organized at Tilak Smarak Mandir in Poona. In his speech, he talked about the three different schools of thought prevalent in the Congress, led by three different leaders—Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Manabendranath Roy—and how it is different from the school of thought of the Hindu Mahasabha. He said: In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Without beginning or end am I, inviolable am I. Vanquish me? In this world no such enemy is born! Resolutely, as the Upholder of Dharma, Challenging very Death, into the battlefield charge I. A sword cannot slice me nor can fire burn me, Craven Death itself shall flee in fear of me, aye! And yet, O Foolish Foe, By fear of Death you dare to scare me! Pushed into the cage of a ferocious lion Reduce him to a cowering servility, I will! Flung into the blaze of a roaring inferno Reduce it to a gentle halo of brilliance, I will! Bring on your mighty, skilled armed Legion, Your weapons and missiles that deadly fire spill! Ha! Like Lord Shiva consuming the poison Halahal, Gulp down and digest all, I will!”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Commenting on the police’s questionable role in the whole case, Tushar Gandhi writes: One of the crucial factors in the success of the murder plot was that the police—who were hampered by Gandhi’s decision not to allow additional security and frisking of his visitors—did not think of placing constables or inspectors from Bombay, Poona or Ahmednagar at Birla House, who would have been able to identify Godse, Apte and Karkare . . . The Congress Government and at least some of the members of the Cabinet were fed up of the interventions of the meddlesome old man. To them, a martyred Mahatma would be easier to live with . . . the way the investigation was carried out, and the lackadaisical approach of the police in trying to protect Gandhi’s life, leads one to believe that the investigation was meant to hide more than it was meant to reveal. The measures taken by the police between 20th and 30th January 1948 were more to ensure the smooth progress of the murderers, than to try and prevent his murder.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Savarkar took on Nehru’s repeated attacks on the Hindu Sangathanist leadership. Reacting to one of Nehru’s assertion that any attempt by Hindu Sangathanist leaders to establish a Hindu Rashtra in India would meet the same fate that Hitler and Mussolini met in Europe, Savarkar denounced his threats through a statement on 22 October 1947. As if the mere demand for a Hindu Raj constitutes a danger to his Government so much more imminent, impending, incalculably disastrous as to call for his immediate attention than the already established Moslem Raj in Pakistan where fanatical atrocities, arson, bloodshed and butchery have been the order of the day . . . Pusillanimous enough to tolerate these diabolical actions and threats on the part of the Moslems against his ‘Indian Union’ Pandit Nehru and his pseudo-nationalistic section in the Congress are delivering mock heroics against the Hindus and swearing that they will fight tooth and nail against those who demand a Hindu Raj.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“So long as we continue to be so cowardly as to yield to any preposterous demand on the part of the Moslems to keep up the show of unity and so terribly afraid of Moslems’ discontent as to allow even the integrity of our Motherland to get broken up into pieces, is it not more likely that this very financial and economical starvation of these would-be Moslem states may goad them on to encroach once more on our Hindu provinces and instigated by the religious fanaticism, which is so inflammable in the frontier tribes even now and urged on by the ideal of a Pathanistan under the lead of the organized forces of the Ameer, may threaten to invade you if you do not handover to them the remaining parts of the Punjab right up to Delhi to make them financially and economically self-supporting?”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“N.C. Chatterjee, one of Savarkar’s close colleagues in the Mahasabha, vented his frustration in a letter to Moonje: The entire Hindu population is with Gandhiji and his movement and if anybody wants to oppose it, he will be absolutely finished and hounded out of public life. The unfortunate statement of Veer Savarkar [opposing Quit India] made our position rather difficult in Bengal. It is rather amusing to find that Mr. Jinnah wants the Mussalmans not to join the Congress movement and Mr. Savarkar wants the Hindus not to join the same. Even when the Congress movement has made a great stir and it shows that it has got thousands of adherents.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Savarkar maintained that while he agreed with the ‘Quit India’ slogan if it implied independence in the truest sense, but he found its interpretation by Gandhi as being ‘wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Joshi’s letters revealed how ‘unconditional help’ was being offered to the government to fight the underground workers and Bose’s Indian National Army soldiers, and how the CPI received financial aid from the government and had a secret pact with the League to undermine the Congress activity in several ways.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“He also declared that P.C. Joshi and a few designated senior politburo members had been ‘in touch with the Army Intelligence and supplied the C.I.D. chiefs with such information as they would require against nationalist workers who were connected with the 1942 struggle or against persons who had come to India on behalf of the Azad Hind Government of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“The case of the Communists of India was a curious one. The secret correspondences exchanged between P.C. Joshi, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Sir Reginald Maxwell, the home member of the Government of India, make it clear that they ‘acted as stooges and spies of the British Government, and helped them against their own countrymen fighting for freedom’.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“His attention was drawn to Pandit Nehru’s statement regarding the Muslim influx in Assam that migrations are inevitable since nature hates vacuum. Savarkar retorted that Pandit Nehru was neither a philosopher nor a scientist and did not know that nature also abhors poisonous gases!”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“He attacked the viceroy’s speeches to this effect and quoted the instance of Hitler who when asked to vacate Poland by Chamberlain said that he would do so when Britain decided to vacate India.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“That the Congress had to stress on the need for Hindu–Muslim unity as a goal in itself showed that this unity was lacking and needed to be achieved (after all they had no Hindu–Christian or Hindu–Parsi unity goals).”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Ambedkar’s fears were shared even by British educationalist and member of the Council of India, who had served as the director of the University of London Institute in Paris, Theodore Morrison, whom he quotes as having said way back in 1899: The views held by the Mahomedans (certainly the most aggressive and truculent of the peoples of India) are alone sufficient to prevent the establishment of an independent Indian Government. Were the Afghan to descend from the North upon an autonomous India, the Mahomedans, instead of uniting with the Sikhs and the Hindus to repel him, would be drawn by all the ties of kinship and religion to join his flag.”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“he took a dig at the Congress remembering Hindus and their votes only during elections: Next election when they come to your Hindu doors to beg for votes tell them in all honesty and humility ‘Sirs Congressmen you are Indian Nationalists; but I am a Hindu and this is a Hindu Electorate? Then how can you accept a vote so tainted by communalism? Please go to a truly “Indian Nationalist electorate”, to beg for votes wherever you may find it; and if you find it nowhere in the world today please wait till a pure and simple and truly “Indian electorate”, comes into being!’ Do you think you will find a dozen Congress candidates honest enough to do so? None, none!”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Elaborating on the accusation made on the Hindu Mahasabha of being a communal organization and a mirror image of the Muslim League, he said: The fact is that Nationalism and Communalism are in themselves either equally justifiable and humane or not. Nationalism when it is aggressive is as immoral in human relation as is Communalism when it tries to suppress the equitable rights of other communities and tries to usurp all to itself. But when Communalism is only defensive, it is as justifiable and humane as an equitable Nationalism itself. The Hindu nationalists do not aim to usurp what belongs to others. Therefore, even if they be called Hindu communalists they are justifiably so and are about the only real Indian Nationalist. For, a real and justifiable Indian Nationalism must be equitable to all communities that compose the Indian Nation. But for the same reason the Moslems alone are communalists in an unjustifiable, anti-national and treacherous sense of the term. For it is they who want to usurp to themselves all that belongs to others. The Indian National Congress only condemns itself as an anti-national body when it calls in the same breath the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League as bodies equally communal in the reprehensible or treacherous sense of that term. Consequently if to defend the just and equitable rights of Hindus in their own land is communalism then we are communalists par excellence and glory in being the most devoted Hindu communalists which to us means being the truest and the most equitable Indian Nationalists!”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“Diagnosing this alleged antipathy of the Muslims, he elaborated: The Moslems in general and Indian Moslems in particular have not as yet grown out of the historical stage, of intense religiosity and the theological concept of state. Their theology and theocratical [sic] politics divide the human world into two groups only—The Moslem land and the enemy land. All lands which are either entirely inhabited by the Moslems or are ruled over by the Moslems are Moslem lands. All lands, which are mostly inhabited by non-Moslem power are enemy lands and no faithful Moslem is allowed to bear any loyalty to them and is called upon to do everything in his power by policy or force or fraud to convert the non-Moslem there to Moslem faith, to bring about its political conquest by a Moslem power. It is no good quoting sentences here or there from Moslem theological books to prove the contrary. Read the whole book to know its trend. And again it is not with books that we are concerned here but with the followers of the book and how they translate them in practice. You will then see that the whole Moslem history and their daily actions are framed on the design I have outlined above. Consequently, a territorial patriotism is a word unknown to the Moslem—nay is tabooed, unless in connection with a Moslem territory. Afghans can be patriots for Afghanisthan is a Moslem territory today. But an Indian Moslem if he is a real Moslem—and they are intensely religious as a people—cannot faithfully bear loyalty to India as a country, as a nation, as a State, because it is today ‘an Enemy Land’ and doubly lost; for non-Moslems are in a majority here and to boot it is not ruled by any Moslem power, Moslem sovereign. Add to this that of all non-Moslems the Hindus are looked upon as the most damned by Moslem theologians. For Christians and Jews are after all ‘Kitabis’, having the holy books partially in common. But the Hindus are totally ‘Kafirs’ as a consequence their land ‘Hindusthan’ is pre-eminently an ‘enemy’ and as long as it is not ruled by Moslems or all Hindus do not embrace Islam . . . What wonder then that the Muslim League should openly declare its intention to join hands with non-Indian alien Moslem countries rather than with Indian Hindus in forming a Moslem Federation? They could not be accused from their point of view of being traitors to Hindusthan. Their conscience was clear. They never looked upon our today’s ‘Hindusthan’ as their country, nation. It is to them already an alien land, and enemy land—‘a Dar-ul-Harb’ and not a ‘Dar-ul-Islam!!”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

“enemy”
― Vikram Sampath, Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966