Veer Savarkar - The Unsung Hero
An inspirational compilation for Prachyam on the freedom fighter Veer Savarkar — his struggle, and what he left behind.
The Edit
Veer Savarkar — The Unsung Hero is an inspirational video made for Prachyam, featuring the freedom fighter Veer Savarkar.
The Subject
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) remains one of the most consequential and
most contested figures of the Indian independence movement.
He founded the Abhinav Bharat Society as a student in 1904, and travelled to
London in 1906 on a scholarship arranged by Shyamji Krishna Varma, where India
House became a centre of revolutionary organising among Indian students. There
he wrote The Indian War of Independence, an account of 1857 that reframed what
British historiography called the Sepoy Mutiny as a national uprising. The book
was proscribed before it was even printed, and circulated in editions smuggled
in under false covers.
Savarkar was arrested in 1910. During transport to India he escaped through a
porthole of the SS Morea at Marseilles and swam ashore, only to be handed back
by French police — an incident that became a matter of international legal
dispute at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. He was sentenced to
two life terms, fifty years in total, and transported to the Cellular Jail at
Port Blair in 1911, where he spent a decade in conditions designed to break
political prisoners.
Moved to Ratnagiri in 1924 under restrictions on his movement and political
activity, he wrote Essentials of Hindutva, the text that gave the term its
modern political meaning, and later served as president of the Hindu Mahasabha
from 1937.
The contest over his legacy — revolutionary and political theorist, or the
petitions he wrote from the Andamans seeking release — has never settled, and it
is the reason he is so often described as unsung.
How I Made It
The piece is a compilation, assembled from a range of footage and media to carry Savarkar's struggle and his legacy.
