"Longlisted for the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, PEN America" "A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year" "The importance to Savarkar of his writing emerges clearly in Janaki Bakhle's intellectual biography, a rare piece of dispassionate criticism on its subject. . . . She describes Savarkars work and poetry without taking her eye off his parallel project as the author of his own legend."---Raghu Karnad, London Review of Books "The most detailed and dispassionate analysis of the ideals of Savarkar. . . . Bakhles work considerably enriches the discourse, going beyond the usual binaries. . . . [ A] remarkable exercise to present a well rounded view of the times in which Savarkar lived, the man he was, the leader he could have been."---Ziya Us Salam, The Hindu "A brilliant intellectual biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. . . . This book is indispensable to understanding not just the thinking of Savarkars time but also the intellectual currents shaping modern India."---Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Foreign Affairs "Bakhles treatment is thematic, with the main chapters devoted to different dimensions of Savarkars outlookhis relationship with the colonial police (an anticolonial revolutionary), the Muslim question (fearful demagogue), his views on caste (social reformer), his poetry, history-writing, and finally the hagiography that has developed around him. This thematic organization . . . undoubtedly has its own advantages, particularly evident in the chapter on poetry, which displays Bakhles impressive research into Savarkars writings in Marathi."---Sanjay Subramaniam, New Left Review "Bakhle uses primary sources, including her subjects Marathi-language writings, to paint an impressive scholarly picture of Savarkars life and thoughts."---Rohit Lamba, Project Syndicate "Savarkar is often viewed in black and whiteas a staunch Hindu nationalist who devoted his life to expounding the virtues of conservative, Hindu majority rule. . . . Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, paints a much more nuanced picture of the Hindutva ideologue." * The Hindustan Times * "[ A] fair, scholarly assessment of Savarkars life and work from a liberal historical perspective."---Siddharth Singh, Open Magazine "A fine book that avoids the usual pitfalls of either hagiography or derision. Bakhle . . . gives her protagonist the serious attention he deserves as one of the most influential Indians of the previous century, and whose ideas have only grown in importance in our times."---Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Swarajya Magazine "The most fascinating aspect of Bakhles book is her reconstruction of Savarkars caste politics. Basing her account on his Marathi writings, she concludes that he has been poorly understood outside his native Maharashtra. Few in the Hindi belt are aware of Savarkars progressive side. . . . The great majority of the Brahmins are those who doggedly deny the horrors of the system in the teeth of such a mass of evidence; who, when they speak of freedom, mean the freedom to oppress the untouchables. Who said this, Ambedkar or Savarkar? Before I read Bakhles book, I confess Id have got this wrong."---Pratinav Anil, The Indian Express "[ A] very detailed immersion in Savarkars poetry in Marathi and his historical works."---TCA Raghavan, India Today "A book of such astonishing relevance and power. . . . [ Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva] corrects many misconceptions and fills in many gaps in the study of Savarkar."---Arvind Sharma, Politics, Religion & Ideology "This hugely impressive study of the thought of the central ideologue of Hindutva, the foundational framework of contemporary Hindu nationalism and divisive communalism, deserves to be immediately acknowledged as essential reading for anyone seriously interested in South Asian politics and culture. Indeed, [ Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva] can and should be viewed as the most important and comprehensive historical analysis of the complex and contested life and ideas of the seminal theorist and propagandist of Hindutva. . . . [ G]round-breaking."---Paul Tonks, Asian Affairs "Monumental."---Surajkumar Thube, The India Forum "[ An] awe-inspiring volume. . . . This is a commendable work not only to know of many lesser known aspects and psyche of her subject (Savarkar) but also to learn much more about the divisive power-play of the British, the crucial decades of the nationalist movement during the 1920s and 1930s, and it unpacks new layers of Hindu anxiety around the Pan-Islamist Muslims of India. Janaki Bakhles historiographic rigour, insight (and beautiful prose) uncovers the genesis behind contemporary resurgence of Hindutva. A must read."---Mohammad Sajjad, Sabrang "An extremely important, judicious, and readable book that establishes how Savarkar, and by extension Hindu nationalism, can be viewed as modernizing, progressive, and even 'decolonial' from some angles. Moreover, it is the first to show how a finely honed and deployed Marathi literary inheritance aided in nationalizing his legacy."---Vikram Visana, American Historical Review
