135th Birth Anniversary of Veer Savarkar on the 28th May 2017
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966) was an Indian
pro-independence activist, lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright. Savarkar coined the term Hindutva (Hinduness) to create a collective Hindu
identity and he was against partition of India. Akanda Bharat was his vision. Savarkar, though being a staunch Hindu, was an atheist and
rationalist who disapproved orthodox Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as
superstitious.
During his stay in London, Savarkar coined the following slogan, while
celebrating various Indian festivals like Raksha Bandan, Guru Gobind Singh Jayanthi, to create a unifying factor for
the ultimate aim to liberate India from the British Rule: “One country, One
God, One Caste, One Mind, Brothers all of us, Without Difference, Without
Doubt.” It was during this period that Savarkar helped to design the first Indian National Flag, which
Madame Cama unfurled at the world socialist
conference at Stuttgart, Germany.
His sufferings as prisoner in various jails and in
particular Anadaman Cellular Jail were
well documented in a book written by him.
Indian Soldiers’ first rebellion of 1857 was labeled as Sepoy Mutiny and this angered Savarkar who brought about the real story behind this mutiny in his famous book titled ‘The Indian War of Independence about the Indian rebellion of 1857”. Though banned by the British Government, Bhagat Singh brought out its Punjabi and Urdu translations of the book which were widely read in India and far east. Even in the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose, Tamil translation of this work was read out like a Bible by the South Indian soldiers in Singapore, though nobody knows till date, who translated it in Tamil.
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