Savarkar : The Journey Begins

  In marathi ‘Kar’ means hand and ‘Savar’ means to save...I think Sawarkar's name conveys the same thing..A hand which saves the nation..His life  is not less than any mysterious adventurous story. The story is full of awesome incidents and sometimes it makes us cry as well. You may feel the wave of inspiration passing through.

        The important reason why Savarkar and his thoughts should be studied is because of the clarity, nobility, and extraordinary erudition in those thoughts. But the basic question in front of all of us is, why should we study these historical characters? Or their thoughts? And what is the use of this in the present day? Why waste our time to revisit all these personalities and thoughts? But we also find the answer to this in Savarkar's literature. Historical characters should be studied for natural gratitude. They should be remembered as a blessing to the world. It should be done because they are a source of inspiration to the youth or society as a whole. We want to move forward by learning all the good and bad, right and wrong from this history. History itself is a witness for a society that bypasses or avoids history becomes very weak in the future. So we need to study such great characters and their philosophy from history.

         So the seeds of growing up of every great man or thinker are deeply rooted somewhere in his childhood. Some special incidents cause it. Therefore, it is inevitable to know Savarkar's childhood at least in brief.

      Vinayak Savarkar was born on 28th May 1883 in a small village called Bhagur in Nashik district. In the same area, Savarkar had earlier inherited Peshwa Jahagir. Damodarpant and Yashodabai have four children Ganesh (Babarao), Vinayak (Tatyarao), Narayan, and daughter Mai. Vinayak lost his mother when he was one and a half to two years old. Later, his father Damodarpant took care of these four children. But in the pandemic of Plague, he lost his father also.

         Vinayak was very talented from his childhood. Vinayak had great interest in poetry, politics, philosophy, and history. But his elder brother Ganesh was interested in ‘Vedas’ and ‘Yoga Sutras’. From his childhood, Vinayaka used to compose his poems. At that time, Lokmanya Tilak had a strong grip on Indian politics. His articles in 'Kesari' were very popular. At the age of 14, Savarkar wrote a Marathi ‘Swadeshi Fatka’ to Lokmanya Tilak's demand, "Swaraj seekers should take Swadeshi vows."

        Also, at the same age, he read the book 'Devi Vijay' in the Puranas and wrote his own three to four hundred lines of the poem on it. From this, we can feel his genius.

         One such case is that Savarkar once went to participate in elocution competition. There he was the last speaker to speak. So when Vinayak got up to speak, all the listeners were bored. But when Vinayak started talking, everyone's boredom ran away and everyone started listening in astonishment. The examiner then said, ‘Now what this boy said was very good. But the thoughts of which he was talking about should not be his thoughts. These thoughts do not suit his age. He must have written it down from someone else. '

         Hearing this, Vinayak replied, ‘These are my thoughts. I did not take those from anybody else. I have a habit of expressing my thoughts. I don't borrow other people's thoughts.' The examiner got angry at him because of his straight forward reply but also accepted that the speech delivered by Vinayak was his thoughts. He was also awarded the first prize. But Vinayak said, ‘Those who do not understand that the ideas I have presented are mine. I don't want any award from them’. This attitude of not compromising one's self-esteem under any circumstances would be useful to him in the time of ‘Kala Pani’ at Andamans as well.

          But the reason for the rise of a freedom fighter in Vinayak was an incident which we can call a triggering point of his life, the assassination of Walter Rand by the Chapekar brothers on June 22, 1897, in Pune. It was obvious that the British government should consider these patriotic Chapekar brothers as 'Cheaters or deceitful'. But Vinayak could not bear to have such contempt by some of his people in India. Perhaps on April 18, 1898, Chapekar was hanged to death. But that night was very sad for Vinayak. He spent the whole night in a very Malaise way.  He was thinking that someone should carry the work of the Chapekar brothers. It should not be stopped. But for a moment he thought, if someone should continue their work, why not me? Why shouldn't I also be involved in this national sacrifice? At that moment, he sat in front of Devi Ashtabhuja's idol and vowed at the tender age of fifteen, "From now on, I will fight the battle of armed revolution to regain the independence of my country. I will coronate Swarajya in my motherland. "

                 The spark that fell in the heart of little Vinayaka escaped with its unbroken flame. The flames of this fire later ignited many people like Madanlal Dhingra and ignited the flames of the Indian Armed Revolution.

                  This led to the rise of ‘Mitra Mela’ by Savarkar  on January 1, 1900, in Nashik. Similar to Subhash Chandra's 'Forward Block', this 'Mitra Mela', which was initially small, but later harassed the British government and troubled a lot. Because, onwards Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was not just like any Tom, Dick or Harry but an ideology and the major source of Indian armed revolution.

                Be with us for his interesting life story.I look forward to you all to read and inculcate values from this amazing story

- Apoorv S. Kulkarni