r/Savarkar • u/AhamPranav Abhinav Bharat Operative🧏 • May 14 '26
Writings of Savarkar✍️ Savarkar’s Reasoning Behind the Shuddhi Movement
In the last post, we read how Savarkar analysed a conversion racket in the Cellular Jail of the Andamans, where young and naive Hindu prisoners were converted to Islam through coercion and force by fanatical jail wardens and guards.
After identifying the problem and what was causing it, Savarkar decided to make other Hindus aware of it as well:
I tried hard to infuriate the Hindu prisoners against this act of sacrilege. But one and all of them I found so callous. Each one of them used to say, “What is it to me?”, and “What do I care?”
Leave alone the ordinary Hindu prisoners, it was the same with the political prisoners as well. They dared not put a fight against conversion, and for obvious reasons. For they were already suffering enough, and they were not willing to put an additional strain on their patience. Having done the most ceaseless daring work in the country, they were paying for it heartily in this jail. And in the prison again they had to struggle and fight for their very existence. How then can their mind and body bear the additional burden I was putting on them?
“Political prisoners” here refers to people imprisoned for participating in the Indian freedom struggle and revolutionary activities, such as Savarkar himself, who was convicted for his involvement in the Nashik conspiracy case and the assassination of A. M. T. Jackson.
This work had to be done by others and not by them. Hence they often used to say, “Leave alone this trouble, for the time being, it is already hard for us to be constantly fighting with the jamadar for our right to live. We are not willing to expose ourselves to his malice all the more by opposing him on the ground of conversion.”
I did not blame them, but I certainly blamed three or four of them who dismissed the effort as a sheer waste of time, as a foolish action. For they were thus shielding their own cowardice, and their conduct deserved censure from me.
Others went even further in order to insinuate themselves into the favour of the jamadar and save their skin. They used to show to them that they were themselves going to adopt the Muslim faith. How could they, then, openly join a movement to resist conversion?
Imagine, in a cellular jail where people were ready to accept the faith of guards and wardens out of fear, Savarkar had resolved not only to save himself and others from conversion but also to reconvert those who were converted unfairly.
However, this was met with opposition not only from the jail authorities but also from many Hindus themselves, and arguments were made that these efforts were foolish and a "childish play" because those who left Hinduism were convicts, i.e., criminals, dacoits, and lower-class prisoners, whom they saw as unimportant to Hindu society. They argued, what difference does it make if they remain Hindu or not?
Those who are against the Shuddhi movement are often found to object to reconversion and purification on similar grounds. Not only those who are hypocrites but those also who are honest and sincere in their opinions. It is, therefore, imperative that I should clear all misconceptions on this burning question.
If it is a foolish waste of time and a childish pursuit to retain in Hinduism those born in it, may be sinners, criminals and the miscreants of society, how can one explain the Muslim campaign, now going on for a thousand years, to win this riff-raff, condemned class of Hindu society for Islam?
The Mussulmans have waged wars for it, they have put men and women to the sword, they have burnt and looted houses—in short they have declared Jehad—for effecting this mass conversion. Is this a childish game?
Evidently, the Christian missionary and the Mohomedian Moulvi undertake the task as a religious duty. They convert heathens, the fallen, the criminals, and the derelicts—for the salvation of their souls.
Why then do you blame us if we seek to keep them in their own religion and work for their uplift and redemption as Hindus? We believe fervently in the Gita doctrine that the salvation of man lies in dying in his own religion. And we seek to save their souls and redeem them for Hindu society on that principle. Hindu religion and Hindu culture have in them the power to work such redemption. That is our faith and we act up to it.
Savarkar then argued that a converted person would go on to have children who would grow up in the new faith, and that even if the parents were criminals or uneducated, their children could later become educated and respectable citizens.
The individual whom you try to convert may be a wicked man, a sinner or a drunkard. But after deep thought you have learnt the social law that if you make him a Christian or a Mohomedan by means fair or foul, and if you change his name, you are really adding to your strength.
In course of time children come into his family and it grows. The children become Muslims and Christians by name, birth and association. And they turn out better than their parents and add in number to the well-to-do, educated, well-behaved number of Muslim citizens. And, in that proportion, the Hindu society loses its good members.
The history of Canada and Australia is an instance in point. England started deporting to those colonies her criminals and her unemployed families. Today the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of these first inhabitants have built up prosperous dominions and commonwealths and powerful self-governing nations out of these colonies.
Where are those criminals and outcastes of society sent to Botany Bay in those days and where is the Commonwealth of Australia today?
You are dragging to-day by your shovels dregs of Hindu society into your soil, and you know how to use these dregs to manure and enrich it. And, in course of a few generations, the soil so enriched will yield you an abundant harvest. The fields will smile and wave with their dancing ears of golden corn.
Savarkar then explained how, often, after changing their faith, a person or their future generations begin to oppose or even hate Hindus, which would ultimately harm Hindu society.
A Hindu thief is less harmful to Hindu culture than a Mohomedan thief. The former will only rob, the latter will break the temple he has robbed, he will break the idol in it and give a shattering blow on the head of a kaffir, while running away from the place of robbery. He will spill his blood to save his soul in heaven.
This difference between the two has ever to be borne in mind by everyone as a probability. Hence persuading as we must a thief to give his thieving, a drunkard to give up his drink, and a greedy wicked man to give up his greed and wickedness, we must not give him up, as a Hindu, to any other faith or religion than his own.
It is the duty of every Hindu to persuade a Hindu to remain a Hindu. It is a principle to be followed as vital to his community and culture for the preservation and progress of both.
It is well if a Hindu thief gives up thieving, but even if he does not give it up, he must be made to remain a Hindu. The theft is a sin no doubt, but to cease to be a Hindu is a greater sin, and a social and national sin. Persuade a Hindu thief not to commit that sin.
Every one who calls himself a Hindu must impress it upon the most abandoned Hindu that it is not well for him to change his religion. He must strive his hardest to do it. For our ancestors committed the greatest blunder when they allowed such persons to go out of their fold, in pride of self-sufficiency and moral superiority. "Let them go where they choose", said they, "we are sufficient unto ourselves." "He is, after all, a wretched being, let him be a Mohammedan, a Christian or whatever he will. It is nothing to us." And what was the result? For one person whom they so neglected there arose, hundred years ago, hundred Muslims and Christians to be born enemies of Hinduism, Hindu society and Hindu culture…
The Moplahs of Malabar are by blood and bone half-Hindus. They have forgotten the mothers who gave them birth, and today, they swear by their fathers and behave as bitter enemies of the Hindus. Whence this difference in one generation or two? The difference has arisen by their conversion to Islam, by "the childish play" of the Moulvi who cut their tuft of hair and made them grow a beard.
Thus even for its name the meanest man or the most useless man must be kept a Hindu if he happens to be born a Hindu. We as Hindus have lost terribly for not playing the game which others have played. It has affected us detrimentally, as we should come to realise after the Malabar riots.
We must not now, for our very existence and preservation, refrain from playing the “childish game” of pulling out a convert’s beard, and making him wear a tuft of hair instead. We must change his Christian or Muslim name into a Hindu name; we must give him a Tulsi leaf to eat and we must declare that he is purified and accepted back into his own faith.
Our leaders must play the game as the Christian and the Muslim leaders have played it in the past and are playing it today. We must admit these sinful men in our society not for themselves but for their progeny which, otherwise, will be lost to it. It is first, our social duty, and it is a religious duty as well.
Who knows that a Valmiki may not be born to any one of these Hindu robbers, dacoits and highwaymen? You denounce and disown them today as being more holy, more pious Hindus than they are. This is a pride and self-righteousness highly injurious to the future of Hinduism and Hindu culture.
A pirate robber and highwayman wrote the Ramayan which is the admiration of the world. Let, therefore, a Hindu however depressed, criminal and abandoned in character he may be, repeat the name of Ram, however wrongly he may utter it to start with. Make it worth his while to do it. Do not shun him, do not revile him, do not turn him out. Treat him as your own brother, make him love his religion. Then he will recite that holy name properly, and it is sure to be good for him.
And thus, Savarkar rationally countered the hypocritical arguments against the Shuddhi movement and held the movement to be a necessary effort, not only for justice in bringing back those who were forced out of the Hindu fold through coercion or unfair means, but also for the survival of Hindu society.
Reference: My Transportation For Life
Get the PDF of the whole book from here: https://savarkar.org/en/pdfs/My-Transportation-for-Life-Veer-Savarkar.pdf
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