Veer Or Apologist, Who Was Savarkar? Vikram Sampath Sheds Light At ABP India@2047 Summit
Veer Savarkar was the first one to boycott foreign-made goods even before Mahatma Gandhi started the Swadeshi movement, said Vikram Sampath at India@2047 Summit.
Historian Vikram Sampath on Tuesday shed light on the life of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, also known as Veer Savarkar and the rhetoric of him being an apologist by a section of society.
Speaking at ABP Network's India@2047 Summit, the noted historian said that while there is a section of society which claims him to have apologised to the Britishers, he was the one to start the first secret society.
Sampath further said that he was the one who first boycotted foreign-made goods, contrary to the popular notion that Mahatma Gandhi did it first. Savarkar was the first one to burn foreign-made clothes at Pune's Ferguson College in 1905, he added.
"He (Savarkar) was someone who formed the country's first secret society, Abhinav Bharat inspired by Italian activists Mazzini and Gariboldi, when Congress was trying to cement its roots," he said in a response to a question on "who was Savarkar" by ABP Network's Chitra Tripathi.
"During his days in London, he initiated the revolutionary movement with other people like Shyamji Krishna Verma and Madam Bhikaji Cama for complete freedom of India," he added.
#ABPIndiaAt2047 | In discussion with Dr. Vikram Sampath (FRHistS), Author and Historian, who deliberates on "Reimagining India: Letters to the Future"
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Mistakes Of The Past
Sampath was further asked about what mistakes happened in past that brought our country to this situation with Pakistan. Sampath replied: "We come from a civilisation where we are taught that there is one truth and there are different ways to reach it and every path is legitimate."
"One can bring others towards their path with dialogue but there are some opposite opinions which believe in my way or the highway and brand those as infidels or kafirs who do not believe in their ideologies," he added.
Sampath further said that it was not a medieval ideology and referred to the destruction of Bamyan Buddhas by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
He also called for addressing the declining population of minority Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
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