Did VD Savarkar give himself the title ‘Veer’? – Leftist propaganda over Savarkar grounded even before it took wings

A false propaganda was started by P Sainath or some Communist (Our emphasis, this could be Pavan Kulkarni writing in The Wire in May 2017) that Savarkar gave himself the title “Swatantryaveer” writing under pseudonym of Chitragupta in his own biography in 1926. A video telling such things was released and promoted by them (Leftists) and all so-called ‘progressives’ took this issue and indulged in their favorite game of throwing mud on Savarkar using Goebelian method.

In response to this, I had shown the reference to Balarao Savarkar written “Ratnagiri Parva’s” ‘Kavi Vaishampaayan’ and dramatist of the play ‘Ranadundubhi’ Wamanrao Joshi calling Savarkar as ‘Swayantryaveer’ in February 1924 itself. Moreover, I never read any reference to Savarkar as ‘Veer’ or ‘Swayantryaveer’ in the biography written by Chitragupta. The only one is by Dr Ravindra Ramdas given in the preface, which is a different matter altogether.

In January 1924 Savarkar was released from jail in Ratnagiri but was banned from taking part in political activities and confined to Ratnagiri. On 15 August 1924 itself a brief biography of Savarkar was written by Shri Ranade, which had it’s preface written by the great Tatyasaheb alias N C Kelkar, and that entire biography refers to Savarkar as ‘Swayantryaveer’ on page after page. This is a written proof and the picture attached herewith is the scanned copy of the first edition. I got this book from a library in Wardha. This book has been digitalized by the World Digital Library.

This book is also available on savarkar.org but it is not in digitalized form but in text form. So there wasn’t certainty about the title “Swatantryaveer”. Since the original book itself is scanned now, there is no scope for any doubt. It is proven that at least by August 1924 itself Savarkar had been honoured by the people with the title “Swatantryaveer” with this evidence (much before 1926).

Besides, there is no corroborative evidence to know if Chitragupta was indeed Savarkar or anyone else. This was first mentioned over two decades after Savarkar’s death. At that time, it was thought that Chitragupta was C Rajagopalachari with it being published from Madras (now Chennai).