THE HINDU NATIONALIST

Janaki Bakhle's Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is a deep dive into the creation of the ideologue

- T.C.A. Raghavan

SAVARKAR AND THE MAKING OF HINDUTVA by Janaki Bakhle PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS ₹999; 432 pages

This is the latest addition to the considerable body of work-some objective, the bulk adulatory and hagiographicon the Hindu nationalist icon V.D. Savarkar. Janaki Bakhle's endeavour is scholarly and source-based and underwritten by her fundamental disagreement with the basic thrust of Savarkar's thought. The book seeks a comprehensive picture of his political and social philosophy, looking at the entire corpus of his writings in Marathi-including a great deal of poetry-and English, which encompasses literature, history, social commentary and, of course, politics and polemics. The book, therefore, seeks to bring "the Marathi and the English sources in conversation with each other". This examination reveals a poet, a historian, a social reformer and anti-Muslim ideologue and polemicist-and how "each of these Savarkars was connected to the other".