Veer Savarkar
The whole idea that Savarkar called himself “veer” goes back to a single source — The Life of Barrister Savarkar, an autobiographical work by the man himself under the pseudonym Chitragupta.
So Savarkar basically wrote a whole book under a fake name just to make himself look cool. The word “veer” does not appear even once in the entire original edition! Yes, Savarkar wrote under a pseudonym, but he did NOT award himself any fancy title, much less “veer.” Then where did the canard even originate?
A later edition from 1986. A good 20 years after Savarkar’s death. And the only place it appears is in the preface. Who wrote the preface? A man named Dr. Ravindra Vaman Ramdas. Also, in case you missed it, this is also the fist time “Barrister Savarkar” of the original title becomes “Swatantra Veer Savarkar.”
In sum, someone called Savarkar “veer” in a preface to a much later edition of the original. We’ll come to the absurd leap from THIS to Savarkar calling himself veer, but first let’s find out why Dr. Ramdas did it in the first place.
Turns out, the title was first accorded to him as early as 1917 in a Ghadar Party publication calling for his release from Cellular.
This absurd leap of Savarkar calling himself “Veer” happened in 2017 when a man named Ziya Us Salam made the claim in a 2018 book titled Saffron Flags and Skullcaps: Hindutva, Muslim Identity and the Idea of India.
“Incidentally, he is said to have added the prefix ‘Veer’ to his name himself through a biography he himself authored.”
Interestingly, Salam leaves a clever wiggle room for himself with “said to have added” instead of a more assertive “added.” Why would be so unsure? Perhaps because he knew he was lying? Do note that he himself notes the title of the autobiography as the original “Life of Barrister Savarkar” and not “Life of Swatantra Veer Savarkar” where the epithet actually appears.
On August 15, 2022, one Pavan Kulkarni wrote an article “How Did Savarkar, a Staunch Supporter of British Colonialism, Come to Be Known as ‘Veer’?”
This time, again, the title of the reference used is the original “Life of Barrister Savarkar” and not “Life of Swatantra Veer Savarkar,” but the assertion is without ambiguity:
A book titled Life of Barrister Savarkar authored by Chitragupta was the first biography of Savarkar, published in 1926. Savarkar was glorified in this book for his courage and deemed a hero. And two decades after Savarkar’s death, when the second edition of this book was released in 1987 by the Veer Savarkar Prakashan, the official publisher of Savarkar’s writings, Ravindra Ramdas revealed in its preface that ‘Chitragupta is none other than Veer Savarkar’.”
He admits that the word appears in the 1987 edition and not the original. He is also right that Chitragupta is Savarkar’s pseudonym. But he offers no evidence that Chitragupta, a.k.a. Savarkar, ever wrote the word “veer” in his original.
Perhaps because there’s none!
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