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<ul><li>Veteran devotional singer <keyword id="806680" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Narendra-Chanchal">Narendra Chanchal</keyword>'s video of a bhajan on the virus went viral. </li><li>The urine of Indian cows was selling at ₹500 a litre and the dung at ₹500 a kilo. </li><li> Hundreds of people lined up to drink cow urine at a ‘gaumutra party.’ </li></ul>The <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> pandemic is a travesty and it has inspired art and trade of a bizarre kind. The current number of infected patients in India are 147, after 13 people were cured of the disease and three lost their lives, according to the latest data available on the ministry of health and family welfare <a href="https://www.mohfw.gov.in/">website</a>. O kitthon aaya corona bhajan It is human nature to look for a bit of comic relief even in the grimmest situations, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is no different. Veteran devotional singer Narendra Chanchal's video of a bhajan on the virus at a recent Holi function went viral. The opening line of the song goes: Dengue bhi aaya, swine flu bi aaya, Chikungunya ne shor machaya, Khabre ki ki ho na, O kitthon aaya corona, Maiya ji, kitthon aaya corona (There was dengue, there was swine flu. Chikungunya created some noise, too. All of it made news, but where did corona come from?). <div type="javascript" title="Instagram" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[
 
]]></cdata></div>

 Later a group of ladies singing ‘Corona bhag ja’ was another quirky and funny viral video that gave netizens a good laugh. 
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="KrishnaMohanINC" handlename="Krishna Mohan Sharma" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1220000348552564736/UfqDHJkF_normal.jpg" favoritecount="4230" retweetcount="1437" status="ये हिंदुस्तान हैं साहब यहाँ कुछ भी हो सकता हैं कोरोना भगाने का गीत 😂😂😂😂 #पीएम_पनौती https://t.co/KmorMr3BVw" createdat="1583584251000" id="1236268070131224579"></div>





 Gaumutra party On Saturday (March 14) Swami Chakrapani, the president of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha organised a ‘Gaumutra party’ (cow urine party) where hundreds of people lined up to drink cow urine being poured from kettles into ‘kulhads.’ 
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="TheDeshBhakt" handlename="Akash Banerjee" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1239401822017617920/vxBJHru-_normal.jpg" favoritecount="5557" retweetcount="1678" status="#DeshBhakt joins #GaumutraParty 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Via #TeamDeshBhakt @sarthakgoswamii ⁦@yononsensedude⁩ https://t.co/ZwhCYSEzAw" createdat="1584196284000" id="1238835123665043456"></div>





 This came after the Assam BJP MLA <keyword id="8857690" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="suman-haripriya">Suman Haripriya</keyword> suggested the bizarre treatment during the budget session of Assam Legislative Assembly. “It (cow urine and cow dung) can cure cancer patients. We have got evidence. Even an Ayurvedic hospital in Gujarat applies cow dung to cancer patients. They are given Panchamrit prepared from cow urine and cow dung,” he said. Cow dung and urine - a coronavirus remedy Inspired by songs Indians started selling bizarre Coronavirus remedies like cow urine and dung. According to IANS urine of Indian cows was selling at ₹500 a litre and the dung at ₹500 a kilo. "I have two cows -- one Indian cow and the other a Jersey cow. I earn my living selling milk. So, after I saw the gomutra party on television, I realised I could make more profit by selling cow urine and dung. Now, I can utilise every part of cows in my business," said Mabud Ali. No non-veg, no Coronavirus At the gaumutra party event, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha’s Chakrapani claimed that COVID-19 is an “avatar” that has “come to punish those who eat non-vegetarian food”. 
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="dhruv_rathee" handlename="Dhruv Rathee" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1080350328099348481/r9y2CKt-_normal.jpg" favoritecount="20189" retweetcount="6442" status="Gaumutra and Gobar Party! Listen to these Hindu Mahasabha intellectuals claiming to treat everything from Coronav… https://t.co/2bokkaLan5" createdat="1584197670000" id="1238840937322774529"></div>





 "Corona is not a virus, but an avatar for the protection of poor creatures. They have come to give the message of death and punishment to the one who eats them," said Swami Chakrapani further stating that the avatar is of Lord Narsingh. Mental Illness is the cause of coronavirus Uttar Pradesh CM <keyword id="43254" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Yogi-Adityanath">Yogi Adityanath</keyword> while addressing the public at the Yog Mahotsav event in Rishikesh said Coronavirus could be prevented by overcoming 'mental illness'. "The world needs to be free of illnesses of the body and mind. If one overcomes mental illness, then one can avoid diseases such as blood pressure, heart attack, kidney failure, liver issues and even the coronavirus," he said. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/topic/coronavirus">coronavirus: Latest News, Articles on coronavirus | Business Insider India</a>

Coronavirus: From 'Kitho aya Corona' to Cow dung and urine remedies, here's what Indians are upto

A milk trader was arrested on Tuesday for selling <keyword id="6362952" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="cow">cow</keyword> dung and <keyword id="6443358" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Urine">urine</keyword> in a makeshift roadside shop in Hooghly district's Dankuni, about 20 km from the West Bengal capital. Mabud Ali was arrested by the Hooghly district police for "cheating and hurting religious sentiments". Ali had from Monday started selling the two bovine excreta claiming the products would ward off <keyword id="1754604" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="coronavirus">Coronavirus</keyword> infection. He said he took inspiration from the Hindu Mahasabha event on gomutra in Delhi. At Ali's stall, one could drink urine of Indian cows at Rs 500 a litre and take the dung at Rs 500 a kilo. Ali had placed packs of cow dung and jars of cow urine on a table by the National Highway 19 -- that links Delhi and Kolkata. The man claimed he got the idea from a gomutra (cow urine) party organised by the Hindu Mahasabha on March 14. "Drink cow urine and ward off coronavirus," said a poster pasted to the table. "I have two cows -- one Indian cow and the other a jersey cow. I earn my living selling milk. So, after I saw the gomutra party on television, I realised I can make more profit by selling cow urine and dung. Now, I can utilise every part of cows in my business," said Ali. However, in Ali's stall, a litre of urine and a kilo of dung of the jersey cow came at a cheaper rate -- Rs 300. "A Jersey cow is not a pure breed like Indian cow. So, its urine also is not that much in demand," he said.

Bengal man arrested for selling cow urine and dung as a Corona drug

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, representing the Muslim parties in the Ram-Janmbhoomi-Dabri masjid land dispute case, tore up a pictorial map showing the exact birthplace of Lord Ram during the hearings in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. The reference to the pictorial map showing the exact birthplace of Lord Ram at the disputed site in Ayodhya by Senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing the All India Hindu Mahasabha, was objected to by Dhavan. Dhavan then asked the bench as to what he should do with it, to which the bench said that he can shred it into pieces. Dhavan then tore the pictorial map, provided by the counsel for All India Hindu Mahasabha, in the courtroom. During the arguments, Singh referred to various aspects of the <keyword id="48834" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Allahabad-High-Court">Allahabad High Court</keyword> judgement and said there has been long faith and belief on the part of Hindus with regard to the scared nature of the birthplace of Lord Ram. Dhavan had also objected to Singh's attempt to refer to a book on Ayodhya, written by former IPS officer <keyword id="207684" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kishore-Kunal">Kishore Kunal</keyword>, saying such attempts should be disallowed. The bench had then asked Singh to proceed with the hearing saying, "Mr Dhavan, we have taken note of your objection."

Lawyer tears up pictoral map as courtroom drama peaks on the last day of Ayodhya arguments

<keyword id="2520139" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cow-trafficking">Cow trafficking</keyword> and slaughtering are words which don’t exist for many Indians, but visit the east and you would encounter the harsh reality — it (cow trafficking) is a regular affair, and a lucrative business for smugglers and butchers. This is precisely the reason why the country’s total cattle population declined from 20.45 crore in 1992 to 19.90 crore in 2007. 
 It is sad that cows are battling for life in India, a country where they are regarded as sacred and worshipped by the majority population. Our Vedic scriptures, which refer to them as ‘mothers,’ attached great importance to cows, and encouraged people to value as well as preserve them. Even Mughal emperors such as Akbar were against <keyword id="2520140" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cow-slaughtering">cow slaughtering</keyword> — the fact was highlighted during a hearing on The <keyword id="2520142" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="West-Bengal-Animal-Slaughter-Central-Act">West Bengal Animal Slaughter Central Act</keyword>, 1950. “Mughal Emperor Babar saw the wisdom of prohibiting the slaughter of cows as and by way of religious sacrifice and directed his son Humayun to follow this. Similarly, Emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Ahmad Shah, it is said, prohibited cow slaughter,” the Supreme Court had said. 
 
Cow traffickers spreading their wings across India The network of cow smugglers is spread across different states. According to local estimates, about 20,000 to 30,000 cows are smuggled to Bangladesh every day. The smuggling reaches its peak during <keyword id="6417740" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Eid-ul-Zuha">Eid-ul-Zuha</keyword> (<keyword id="6622052" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Bakrid">Bakrid</keyword>). From Bangladesh, they are exported all over the world, especially the Middle East, where beef is in huge demand. The route traffickers take for illegal export of cow is: cows from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and states as far as Haryana and Punjab are first transported to <keyword id="6357783" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="West-Bengal">West Bengal</keyword> from where they are smuggled to Bangladesh through <keyword id="55201" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Murshidabad">Murshidabad</keyword>, the bordering district of India and Bangladesh. 
 On August 29, about 2000 cows stuffed in 100 trucks were caught in Govindpur (Jharkhand). The trucks, which were carrying cows from the neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand for being sacrificed on the occasion of Eid-ul-Zuha (Bakrid), were on their way to West Bengal. These trucks, jam-packed with cows, were found by the volunteers of <keyword id="2520141" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Akhil-Bharatiya-Gau-Raksha-Mission">Akhil Bharatiya Gau Raksha Mission</keyword>, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and BJP activists. 
 
Holy cows facing the worst in West Bengal 
In Bihar, export of cows for any purpose is banned. In Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir, there is a punishment of up to 10 years of imprisonment if someone is found guilty of cow slaughter. Even possession of flesh of slaughtered animals is a punishable offence with imprisonment up to one year. Transport of cows outside Jammu and Kashmir for slaughtering is also prohibitted. 
 
Sadly, the West Bengal police and administration isn’t taking any stern action in this regard. The Akhil Bharatiya Gau Raksha Mission activists allege that the West Bengal police behave rudely whenever they approach them to lodge complaint. According to them, when their activists rescued some cows in Kolkata’s Lalbazar, police threatened to arrest them under non-bailable sections. Now, the big question that arises is: Is the state police under some ‘external pressure’ not to act against the perpetrators? 
 
There surely seems to be some connection. The West Bengal government’s sheer apathy towards cow slaughtering has been witnessed on several occasions. For instance, the Bengal government used the provision granted in the West Bengal Animal Slaughter Central Act*, 1950, to allow cow slaughter on Eid-ul-Zuha (Bakrid). After this relaxation, more than one lakh young and healthy cows got slaughtered in Kolkata every year on this occasion. 
 
The Calcutta High Court intervened and struck down the exemption provided by the state government in 1982. The Bengal government and butchers took the matter to the Supreme Court, which upheld the High Court’s judgment. But, in spite of the court order, the West Bengal administration hasn’t taken any concrete measures; except for cosmetic steps like publishing advertisements in local newspapers. 
 
The Animal Husbandry Department of the Government of India says that in West Bengal, the contempt of the Supreme Court's judgment is going on since 1994. “Any amount of follow-up action by the animal welfare organisations to persuade the state administration have not achieved the desired results. On the contrary, some peaceful agitators pleading with the administration for compliance with the Supreme Court order were rounded up and put behind bars on the occasion of Eid-ul-Zuha (Bakrid) in the year 2002.” 
 
Better fate awaits cows 
Except for West Bengal and the northeastern states, other states have been making effort to save cows. In 1982, the erstwhile Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, wrote a letter to chief ministers of 14 states, asking them to enforce the ban in letter and spirit. Sadly, the ban has remained only in ‘letters’ and never in ‘spirit.’ 
 
With the Narendra Modi-led government in power at the Centre, one can hope that stern action would be taken against the smugglers. After all, Modi had talked about the issue during his election campaign and promised to take care of farmers and their cattle. He ruthlessly attacked the UPA government for ‘pink revolution’ and increase in export of meat, including beef, while his supporters chanted Modi ko matdaan, Gai ko jeevandaan slogan. 
 
However, after coming to power, we have not seen any action from the BJP government on this front yet. Agreed, that government has several high-priority tasks at hand, but cow protection is also the need of the hour — not because of the religious sentiments attached, but for maintenance of the ecological balance. If slaughtering of cows goes on rampantly, they may get to the verge of extinction, which would disturb the ecological chain. 
 
* The West Bengal Animal Slaughter Central Act, 1950: The act was passed to “control the slaughter of certain animals with a view to increase the supply of milk and to avoid the wastage of animal power necessary for improvement of agriculture. Section 2 lays down that the Act applies to animals specified in the sched­ule. The schedule to the Act covers bulls, bullocks, cows, calves, male and female buffaloes, buffalo calves and castrated buffaloes.” However, the Act also has a provision for lifting the ban for religious, medicinal or research purposes.

With Cow Trafficking And Slaughtering On Rise, ‘Mother’ Cow Struggles For Existence

Makers of Prabhas, Kriti Sanon and Saif Ali Khan starrer '<keyword id="9776044" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="adipurush" source="Orion">Adipurush</keyword>' announced a <keyword id="15449995" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="new-release-date-on-social-media" source="Orion">new release date on social media</keyword>. <keyword id="2236748" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="om-raut" source="Orion">Om Raut</keyword> took to his Twitter and announced the <keyword id="6165178" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="new-release-date" source="Orion">new release date</keyword>. Sharing the details, he wrote, Jai Shri Ram...#Adipurush releases IN THEATRES on June 16, 2023." <div type="twitter" handle="omraut" handlename="Om Raut" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1559471781857091584/YzpNsLzZ_normal.jpg" favoritecount="6697" retweetcount="2159" status="जय श्री राम…#Adipurush releases IN THEATRES on June 16, 2023.#Prabhas #SaifAliKhan @kritisanon @mesunnysingh… https://t.co/x1HZIowuTU" createdat="1667785270000" id="1589432741065785344"></div> He also shared a picture, which read, "Adipurush is not a film, but a representation of our devotion to Prabhu Shri Ram and commitment towards our sanskriti and history. In order to give a complete visual experience to the viewers, we need to give more time to the teams working on the film. Adipurush will now release on June 16th, 2023. We are committed to make a film that India will be proud of. Your support, love and blessings is what keeps us going." 'Adipurush' the mega Indian film produced by T Series and Retrophiles, directed by Om Raut is a visual extravaganza which was slated to release on January 12, 2023. Now it will hit the theatres on June 16, 2023. The film stars Prabhas, Kriti Sanon and Saif Ali Khan in the lead roles. The film is based on the Indian Epic Ramayana. Prabhas plays Lord Ram while Saif stars as the antagonist Lankesh in the movie. The film has been mired in controversy ever since its teaser was unveiled. The teaser courted major backlash over the looks of Saif's fierce Ravana who is shown sporting a beard and a buzz cut. Many people across the country slammed the makers for allegedly hurting their religious sentiments. In fact, a Hindu seers body, Akhil Bharatiya Sant Samiti, has sought the formation of a Sanatan Censor Board alleging improper depiction of Hindu Gods and Goddesses in Bollywood movies. Also, recently, a plea seeking a stay order on the film release has been moved in a Delhi court. The plea alleged that Adipurush portrayed Lord Rama and Hanuman in an unwarranted and inaccurate way as they wear leather straps. The plea has been moved by advocate Raj Gaurav against producers Bhushan Kumar and Om Raut. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-starts-testing-7-99-twitter-blue-subscription-plan-for-apple-ios-users/articleshow/95331248.cms">Elon Musk starts testing $7.99 Twitter Blue subscription plan for Apple iOS users</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/airbnb-and-indigo-come-together-for-an-interfriendtion/articleshow/95298469.cms">Airbnb and IndiGo come together for an 'InterFriendtion'</a>

Om Raut announces new release date of Prabhas, Kriti Sanon starrer 'Adipurush'

Wazirpur Delhi assembly election candidate names

In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.
The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.
The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.
A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.
Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.
The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.
His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.
Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.
Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.
A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.
His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.
Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>

Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)
Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.
The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.
Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)
Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.
Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.
By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.
On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.
Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.
In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.
"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar
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Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted
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