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Violence as Civility: V.D. Savarkar and the Mahatma’s Assassination

ABSTRACT This paper examines V.D. Savarkar’s interpretation of the place of violence within his larger arguments about civility as a way to rethink the murder of M.K. Gandhi – the Mahatma. Savarkar’s seminal work on Hindutva transformed political debate in the twentieth century by rethinking the categories of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindusthan.’ His contributions to the debates on civility provided an important insight: that is, violence was central to the understanding of what he calls Hindu civility – and by extension Hindu civilization. For him, to marginalize the centrality of violence was to not only overlook the basic foundation of civility, but it was to ignore the foundation of what it meant to be a Hindu. It was a radical statement of inscribing violence as central to the episteme of Hindu thought. This paper argues that Savarkar’s interpretation of political assassination was a key component of his conceptualization of violence as an ethical mode of conduct. It further examines Savarkar’s writings on the need for political assassinations against those individuals who promoted ‘excessive non-violence.’