
Veer Savarkar Jayanti 2025: A look back into the life of a fierce freedom fighter
Veer Savarkar Jayanti 2025: A look back into the life of a fierce freedom fighter| In Photos
6 Photos . Updated: 28 May 2025, 11:07 AM IST
India commemorates the birth anniversary of the revolutionary leader Vinayak Damodar Savarkar every year on May 28, honouring his enduring influence on generations of freedom fighters.
1/6India observes Veer Savarkar Jayanti every year on May 28 to honour the birth anniversary of freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Veer Savarkar.
2/6Veer Savarkar was born in the village of Bhagur near Nashik, Maharashtra, into a Marathi Hindu Chitpavan Brahmin family. His parents were Damodar and Radhabai Savarkar.
3/6Veer Savarkar actively worked towards the upliftment of the Hindu community. He strongly advocated for the abolition of the caste system and supported the reconversion of individuals who had adopted other religions back to Hinduism.
4/6Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a prominent radical nationalist leader, had a profound influence on Veer Savarkar. Savarkar, often in the presence of Tilak himself, organised bonfires of foreign clothes in India. He strongly opposed the 1905 partition of Bengal.
5/6Around 1909, Savarkar was accused of plotting to overthrow British rule by targeting government officials. In March 1910, he was arrested in London on several charges, including distributing arms, waging war against the British Crown, and delivering seditious speeches.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Scroll.in
2 hours ago
- Scroll.in
Podcast: In the history of modern Hindu identity, the failure and triumph of Hindutva
The first European colonial foray into India, the historian Manu S Pillai notes, began with utter confusion. When Vasco da Gama and his Portuguese crew landed on the coast of Kerala in 1498, they went to a Hindu temple. Here, they participated in religious rites and prayed to a goddess. Da Gama and his crew were certainly not motivated by any feelings of religious accommodation towards people they would soon pillage and conquer. Rather, they believed they were in a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary and that the unfamiliar deities painted on the walls were actually Christian saints. Da Gama's mistake inaugurated a much longer history of confusion and misunderstanding. Pillai's new book, Gods, Guns and Missionaries, examines this history in order to trace the genesis of modern Hindu identity and, more specifically, modern Hindu nationalism. Any account of Hindu nationalism must acknowledge the central role of history (both imagined and real). But Pillai delves back four centuries to identify critical changes in religious practice and belief. This is a story which involves both VD Savarkar and Voltaire; Bible-thumping bureaucrats and Indophile savants who compared the Vedas to the Bible; and reformers who read Thomas Paine and reactionaries who caught the attention of Lenin. Perhaps confusion was an inevitable result of such a wide-ranging intellectual exchange. In this episode of Past Imperfect, Pillai sorts out just how these various actors influenced one of the world's oldest faiths. A number of contemporary scholars have argued that Hinduism was 'invented' during the colonial era. Pillai strongly disagrees. The idea of an invented Hinduism, he contends, grants far too little agency to Indians and disregards a much longer sense of a distinct Hindu identity vis-à-vis members of other faiths, such as Islam. Certainly, Hindu practice underwent dramatic change under colonialism. But Pillai prefers to see modern-day Hinduism, including Hindu nationalism, as only the religion's latest avatar. This avatar, he continues, has 'one foot in tradition' and 'the other in European sensibilities and confusion.' When the first European conquerors and missionaries landed on Indian shores, they displayed a profound aversion to the religion, fortified by ideas of Christian and Western superiority. There were notable exceptions – the Italian Jesuit Roberto de Nobili styled himself as a Brahmin to win high-caste converts, even refusing to eat with other Europeans – but by and large they saw little value in Hinduism, and understood even less. The Protestant Reformation in Europe, however, added a new dimension to this Eurocentrism. Now, Protestant missionaries brought to India certain ideas of what constituted religion: for example, strict monotheism and a single authoritative religious book. Hindu interlocutors, long accustomed to accepting multiple paths to God, were perturbed by the utter narrow-mindedness of their conquerors. The European Enlightenment added a new veneer of confusion. Western scholars, often with far kinder attitudes towards Indian culture, drew on newly-translated Hindu texts to buttress their own critiques of Christianity. In this manner, they placed a premium on the Vedas, believing them to be an enlightened 'single fount' of a religion which was later on corrupted into polytheism and idolatry. People like Voltaire were not above credulously accepting certain Vedic texts later discovered to be forgeries. As Pillai notes, Europeans' 'half-boiled theories' did not undergo much refinement: instead, they became infused with 'power and certainty' via Western political and military ascendancy in the subcontinent. Faced with missionary polemics and Western technological superiority, Hindu reformers fought back by coopting some of their conquerors' ideas. Rammohan Roy, for example, tried to distill a rational monotheism from the body of Hindu belief and practice. This, Pillai argues, was an explicitly political project: Rammohan was keen on attacking both Eurocentrism and Western delusions about the religion. In the process, however, he helped kickstart the Protestantisation of Hinduism, rejecting parts of the faith that did not conform with post-Reformation religious notions – and, in the process, discounting much of its lived tradition and practice. Others, like Jotirao and Savitribai Phule, emulated missionary tactics, focusing on education. Protestantisation brought about another key change: Hinduism evolved a defensive edge. Dayananda Saraswati, who subscribed to the idea of a Vedic golden age followed by decline in the Puranic era, was concerned with Hindu cohesiveness, keeping a watchful eye on Muslim and Christian proselytisation. His Arya Samaj, Pillai states, 'was transformed into an organisation nobody had seen in India before: a Hindu evangelical movement.' Dayananda 'became the grandfather of mass-based Hindu nationalism '. Bal Gangadhar Tilak enhanced this defensive posture, popularising festivals to discourage Hindu participation in Muharram and consolidate a common religious identity across castes. But it was Savarkar who clinched the winning formula for Hindu nationalism. By focusing Hindu identity on a shared history, and arguing that this history consisted of a constant struggle for Hindu self-determination, Savarkar accomplished 'a theoretical masterstroke.' He dismissed other aspects of Hinduism's history, such as its tolerance and open-mindedness. 'Tolerance was weakness,' Pillai sums up Savarkar's worldview, 'no matter how it was romanticised, when surrounded by intolerant faiths.' As Pillai concludes, the triumph of Hindutva was not inevitable. Even if Hindu nationalism was a carefully constructed 100-year project, it was, for much of that time, a failure. In the aftermath of Tilak's death, Pillai finds, 'it looked like Hindutva was coming apart', challenged by lower-caste movements. It is an important lesson to keep in mind amidst the surging global rightward lurch: no ideology lasts forever. Future generations will examine today's political and religious certainties and, inevitably, identify continued patterns of confusion and misunderstanding. Dinyar Patel is an assistant professor of history at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Researchin Mumbai. His award-winning biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.


India Today
3 hours ago
- India Today
Devendra Fadnavis inaugurates final stretch of Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi highway
The remaining 76-kilometre stretch of the Hindu Hriday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, from Igatpuri to Amane, was innaugarated by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, June 5. This milestone marks the completion of a transformative infrastructure project that spans 701 kilometres, connecting 24 districts across Vidarbha, Marathwada and North journey began with the inauguration of the first 520-kilometer segment from Nagpur to Shirdi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 11, 2022. This was followed by the opening of the second phase, an 80-kilometer stretch from Shirdi (Kokanmathan) in Ahmednagar district to Bharvir Dhantore in Nashik district, by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on May 26, 2023. The third phase, covering 25 kilometers from Bharvir Dhantore to Hutatma Point, was launched by Public Works Minister Dada Bhuse on May 4, A standout feature of the final 76-kilometre section, which cuts through the rugged Sahyadri mountain range across Nashik and Thane districts, is the inclusion of five double tunnels totalling 10.73 kilometres (21.46 kilometres with both carriageways). The tunnel at Panke (Igatpuri), stretching 8 kilometres, stands as Maharashtra's longest and widest at 17.61 meters, with a height of 9.12 meters. This final leg will enable the Igatpuri to Kasara stretch to be traversed in just eight minutes. This offers a vital alternative to the congested Kasara ghat on National Highway 3, promising smoother traffic completion of this stretch will revolutionise travel, cutting the journey from Thane (Amane) to Nagpur to approximately eight hours. It will also enhance accessibility for commuters from Thane and Mumbai to Shirdi as well as benefit farmers in Shirdi, Ahmednagar, and the Sinnar and Igatpuri areas of Nashik by expediting the transport of agricultural goods to the Mumbai Metropolitan 392 villages across 26 talukas in 10 revenue divisions, the six-lane highway directly links Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati, Washim, Buldhana, Jalna, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ahmednagar, Nashik, and Thane, while indirectly connecting 14 other districts. With speed limits set at 100 kilometres per hour on inclines and 120 kilometres per hour on flat terrain, the route slashes the traditional 17-18-hour Nagpur-to-Mumbai journey to just eight hours via the new Greenfield it will link Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai to Mihan in Nagpur, facilitating rapid goods transportation across India and beyond.


New Indian Express
3 hours ago
- New Indian Express
'Don't like girls wearing skimpy clothes': MP minister stirs new controversy with sexist remark
While drawing parallels between short speeches and short dresses, the state's Urban Development and Housing Minister said, 'In western countries, it's said that a woman who wears fewer clothes is considered very beautiful and a leader who speaks less is considered good. I don't believe in that. I believe a woman is a form of the goddess. She should wear nice clothes. I don't find women in short clothes attractive.' 'Sometimes girls come to take selfies with me. I tell them – 'Beta, come in proper clothes next time, then we'll take a photo,'' he added. This is not the first time Vijayvargiya has made controversial statements about women in public. At a Hanuman Jayanti event in Indore in 2022, he had said, 'I won't lie on Hanuman Jayanti... but girls these days wear such filthy clothes... We call women goddesses, but they don't appear that way... They look like Shurpanakha (a demoness from Hindu mythology). God has given you a beautiful body, at least wear decent clothes. Teach your children values.'