Where politics of reverence makes heroes, the politics of hate creates villains. Revolutionary leader, Hindu nationalist and writer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), known otherwise as Veer Savarkar, is one such controversial and contested figure who has oscillated between the love-hate spectrum of the country's contemporary history. "The Congress has called Savarkar a traitor, the Congress and the Left have both accused him of writing mercy petitions to the British, the Hindu Right hails him as a hero, and others say he masterminded Mahatma Gandhi's assassination," says Mumbai-based writer and senior journalist Vaibhav Purandare, whose curiosity about this much maligned and equally revered historical figure, saw him invest five years of research into penning a new biography, Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva (Juggernaut Books).

Purandare who has previously authored Sachin Tendulkar: A Definitive Biography, and Bal Thackeray and the Rise of the Shiv Sena, says the noise and misinformation around the life of Savarkar, stems from the lack of literature dedicated to the inquiry of his life. "The last proper biography of Savarkar in English was published in 1966 [Veer Savarkar by Dhananjay Keer]. With the rise of Hindu nationalism, there has been renewed attention on him from the mid-1980s onwards and especially, from the time of the rise of Narendra Modi, as Savarkar was the man who founded the theory of Hindutva in 1921. [What is happening today] is more a widespread airing of sharply polarised opinions." But Savarkar, he says, played a stellar role in India's independence movement, calling for complete Swaraj at least 20 years, before the Congress did so in 1929. "Thus, both from the point of view of understanding today's India and understanding his role in the anti-colonial movement, the need to tell Savarkar's
story by marshalling solid facts has never been greater than it is today."

The father of Hindutva

Vaibhav Purandare began research five years ago. Pic/ Atul Kamble