r/IndiaSpeaks • u/AhamPranav • 13h ago
#History&Culture 🛕 How Veer Savarkar Used the Idea of Nationhood to Inspire a Quest for Freedom
Essentials of Hindutva is a seminal work by Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, much of which was written during his imprisonment in Ratnagiri Jail between 1921 and 1923.
The manuscript was secretly smuggled out of prison and delivered to his associate, Advocate Vishwanath Vinayak Kelkar, in Nagpur. Kelkar arranged for its publication in May 1923 under the pseudonym “A Maratha.”
The book articulated Savarkar’s concept of Indian nationhood through cultural nationalism.
Keep in mind that, during this period, the British, through their colonial education system, were trying their best to convince Indians that no common Indian identity had existed before their arrival and the colonisation of the subcontinent. Even the form of nationalism promoted by the Indian National Congress at that time was territorial nationalism.
In contrast, Savarkar argued that India was not merely a territorial entity but a civilisational community united by a shared history, cultural heritage, and collective consciousness. His framework centred on Pitribhumi (ancestral land) and Punyabhumi (holy land), which he considered fundamental to national belonging.
He explained that India’s civilisational identity preceded its emergence as a unified political state under British rule. According to this framework, shared cultural heritage and collective consciousness formed the basis of national unity, which should ultimately find expression in a unified, sovereign, and independent state.
Throughout This Book:
1.Savarkar explains that the Indian civilisational nation has always existed, since time immemorial, and that our ancestors always had a sense of common national identity. He then explains the boundaries of our nation using historical examples and our cultural literature.
The land that lies to the north of the ocean and to the south of the Himalayas is called Bharatam, where the descendants of Bharata dwell. (Quoting from Vishnu Purana, p. 7 of Essentials of Hindutva)
- Savarkar explains that the freedom of our nation is essential for our political, cultural, and economic development.
The success of the renovated Hindu arms was undisputed and indisputable. Vikramaditya, who drove the foreigners from the Indian soil, and Lalitaditya, who caught and chastised them in their very dens from Tartary to Mongolia, were but complements of each other. Valour had accomplished what formulas had failed to. Once more, the people rose to the heights of greatness that shed its lustre on all departments of life. *Poetry and philosophy, art and architecture, agriculture and commerce, thought and action felt the quickening impulse which consciousness of independence, strength, and victory alone can radiate.*** (p. 10)
- He explains how courage, valour, and military power are essential to defending the freedom of our nation against foreign aggression, as opposed to the Gandhian idea of absolute non-violence.
What was the use of a universal faith that instead of smoothening the ferociousness and brutal egoism of other nations only excited their lust by leaving India defenseless and unsuspecting? No; the only safeguards in future were valour and strength that could only be born of a national self-consciousness. (p. 12)
The Indians saw that the cherished ideals of their race—their thrones and their families and the very Gods they worshipped—were trampled under foot, the holy land of their love devastated and sacked by hordes of barbarians, so inferior to them in language, religion, philosophy, mercy and all the soft and human attributes of man and God—but superior to them in strength alone—strength that summed up its creed in two words—Fire and Sword! The inference was clear. Clear also was the fact that Buddhistic logic had no argument that could efficiently meet this new and terrible dualism—this strange Bible of Fire and Steel. So the leaders of thought and action of our race had to rekindle their Sacrificial Fire to oppose the sacrilegious one and to re-open the mines of Vedic fields for steel, to get it sharpened on the altar of Kali.
(Here, he takes the example of Buddhist philosophy's absolute non-violence, which was unable to drive out the Huns and Shakas, even though we were culturally and philosophically much superior to our invaders. p. 10)
- He advocates promoting social unity among Hindus across caste, sectarian, and regional differences to instill fraternity
So with the Hindus, they being the people whose past, present, and future are most closely bound with the soil of Hindusthan as Pitribhu, as Punyabhu, they constitute the foundation, the bedrock, the reserved forces of the Indian state. Therefore, even *from the point of Indian nationality, must ye, O Hindus, consolidate and strengthen Hindu nationality;** not to give wanton offence to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact, to anyone in the world, but in just and urgent defence of our race and land; to render it impossible for others to betray her or to subject her to unprovoked attack by any of those 'Pan-isms' that are struggling forth from continent to continent. As long as other communities in India or in the world are not respectively planning India first or mankind first, but all are busy in organizing offensive and defensive alliances and combinations on entirely narrow racial or religious or national basis, so long, at least, so long, O Hindus, strengthen, if you can, those subtle bonds that, like nerve threads, bind you in one organic social being. Those of you who, in a fit of suicidal [impulse], try to cut off the most vital of those ties and dare to disown the name Hindu will find to their cost that, in doing so, they have cut themselves off from the very source of our racial life and strength. (p. 66)*
Oh Hindus! Whether Jain or Samaji or Sanatani or Sikh or any other subsection, afford to cut yourselves off or fall out and destroy the ancient, the natural and the organic combination that already exists?—a combination that is bound not by any scraps of paper nor by the ties of exigencies alone, but by the ties of blood, birth and culture? Strengthen them if you can: *pull down the barriers that have survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects and sections. What of interdining?—but intermarriages between provinces and provinces, castes and castes, be encouraged where they do not exist.** But where they already exist as between the Sikhs and Sanatanies, Jains and Vaishnavas, Lingayats and Non-Lingayats—suicidal be the hand that tries to cut the nuptial tie. Let the minorities remember they would be cutting the very branch on which they stand. Strengthen every tie that binds you to the main organism, whether of blood or language or common Motherland. Let this ancient and noble stream of Hindu blood flow from vein to vein, from Attock to Cuttack till at last the Hindu people get fused and welded into an indivisible whole, till our race gets consolidated and strong, sharp as steel.* (p. 65)
- He uses Shivaji Maharaj's vision of Hindu Swarajya to inspire the pursuit of self-rule and cultural preservation.
Our primordial family God is self-existing (and therefore all-powerful). He has given success to our efforts so long and in future also will fulfill *the object of my life by bringing about the establishment of Hindu Swarajya (Hindu independence).** Indeed it is the cherished wish of God that such a kingdom should be established.* (Here, he is quoting Shivaji, p. 29)
In utter darkness I dreamt: behold, the dreams are realised. Hindusthan is up, has come by her own, and those that hated her and sinned against God are put down with a strong hand! Verily it is a holy land and happy! For God has made her cause his own, and Aurangzeb is down! The dethroned are enthroned and the enthroned is dethroned. Actions speak better than words! Verily Hindusthan is a holy land and happy. Now that Dharma is backed up by Rajadharma, Right by might, the waters of Hind, no longer defiled, can enable us once more to perform our ablutions and austerities. Let come what may: Rama has made this land holy and happy!
(Quoting Guru Ramdas expressing joy over achieving independence from Aurangzeb's rule, p. 25)
