Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India’s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century.
Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar’s voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the complexities in the various positions he took as a champion of the beleaguered Hindu community, an anticaste progressive, an erudite if polemical historian, a pioneering advocate for women’s dignity, and a patriotic poet. This critical examination of Savarkar’s thought shows that Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is a militant political program that has targeted the Muslim community in pursuit of power in postcolonial India.
By bringing to light the many legends surrounding Savarkar, Bakhle shows how this figure from a provincial locality in colonial India rose to world-historical importance. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva also uncovers the vast hagiographic literature that has kept alive the myth of Savarkar as a uniquely brave, brilliant, and learned revolutionary leader of the Hindu nation.
"The most detailed and dispassionate analysis of the ideals of Savarkar. . . . Bakhle’s work considerably enriches the discourse, going beyond the usual binaries. . . . [A] remarkable exercise to present a well rounded view of the times in which Savarkar lived, the man he was, the leader he could have been."—Ziya Us Salam, The Hindu
"Bakhle uses primary sources, including her subject’s Marathi-language writings, to paint an impressive scholarly picture of Savarkar’s life and thoughts."—Rohit Lamba, Project Syndicate
"Savarkar is often viewed in black and white—as a staunch Hindu nationalist who devoted his life to expounding the virtues of conservative, Hindu majority rule. . . . Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, paints a much more nuanced picture of the Hindutva ideologue."—The Hindustan Times
"[A] fair, scholarly assessment of Savarkar’s life and work from a liberal historical perspective."—Siddharth Singh, Open Magazine
"A fine book that avoids the usual pitfalls of either hagiography or derision. Bakhle . . . gives her protagonist the serious attention he deserves as one of the most influential Indians of the previous century, and whose ideas have only grown in importance in our times."—Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Swarajya Magazine
"The most fascinating aspect of Bakhle’s book is her reconstruction of Savarkar’s caste politics. Basing her account on his Marathi writings, she concludes that he has been poorly understood outside his native Maharashtra. Few in the Hindi belt are aware of Savarkar’s ‘progressive’ side. . . . ‘The great majority of the Brahmins are those who doggedly deny the horrors of the system in the teeth of such a mass of evidence; who, when they speak of freedom, mean the freedom to oppress the untouchables.’ Who said this, Ambedkar or Savarkar? Before I read Bakhle’s book, I confess I’d have got this wrong."—Pratinav Anil, The Indian Express
"[A] very detailed immersion in Savarkar’s poetry in Marathi and his historical works."—TCA Raghavan, India Today
"A book of such astonishing relevance and power. . . . [Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva] corrects many misconceptions and fills in many gaps in the study of Savarkar."—Arvind Sharma, Politics, Religion & Ideology
"This hugely impressive study of the thought of the central ideologue of Hindutva, the foundational framework of contemporary Hindu nationalism and divisive communalism, deserves to be immediately acknowledged as essential reading for anyone seriously interested in South Asian politics and culture. Indeed, [Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva] can and should be viewed as the most important and comprehensive historical analysis of the complex and contested life and ideas of the seminal theorist and propagandist of Hindutva. . . . [G]round-breaking."—Paul Tonks, Asian Affairs
“Bakhle’s brilliant biography shows how rigorously contextualized history can offer insights into contemporary politics. Her analysis of Savarkar’s strategies to overlay caste with ethnicity in pursuit of a Hindu versus Muslim identity, and her mapping of his tactical devices to mobilize a constituency by mixing fact with fiction, illuminate parallel processes today and offer key lessons for policymakers and civil society more broadly.”—Radha Kumar, author of Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir
“Outstanding. Savarkar emerges in these pages as a celebrated poet and playwright, a historian, a reformist critic of caste, and a bearer of visceral antipathy toward Muslims. Importantly, Bakhle helps us see the deeply different sensibilities that separate English-language scholarship on modern India from publications in the regional languages. A brilliant and enduring achievement, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the intellectual history of Hindutva.”—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age
“The strength of this book is its incisive analysis of Savarkar’s voluminous literary writings in Marathi. Bakhle gives us a coherent account of Savarkar’s rationalism, hatred for Muslims, and anticaste campaigns, and thereby explains why he is such a revered figure in Maharashtra even among those who do not subscribe to his politics.”—Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University
“In a remarkable achievement, Janaki Bakhle has written the definitive study of Savarkar and the making of Hindu nationalism. Revealing the complex intellectual debates from which the man and his ideas emerged, she has provided us with the most important piece missing from the story of modern India.”—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford
“In Modi’s India, Savarkar is promoted everywhere as a Hindu hero and freedom fighter. Janaki Bakhle’s erudite and critical study of Savarkar’s life and writings draws on a vast number of sources to provide a nuanced and complex picture of this figure. Bakhle’s timely book is a landmark study that also sets a new standard for how to combine biography and broad intellectual history. A real achievement.”—Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University
“A monumental achievement. With dazzling scholarship and prose that moves along with a propulsive power, Bakhle provides the best intellectual account we have of Savarkar’s imaginative universe. I expect every page of this book to be widely read and scrutinized in political and literary circles.”—Pratap Bhanu Mehta, author of The Burden of Democracy
“Stepping away from heated polemics, Bakhle offers a rigorous, scholarly study of the chief ideological source of the right-wing Hindu nationalism ascendant in India today. Reading Savarkar’s writings in both English and Marathi and in different genres, Bakhle shows that what binds them together is an extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric. With a thorough and meticulous analysis, this book establishes that an exclusionary logic is deeply seated in the ideology of Hindu nationalism. A splendid achievement.”—Gyan Prakash, author of Mumbai Fables
