Re-reading The First Indian War today, its most striking feature, especially in the context of Savarkar's later works, is the absence of any sense that Muslims were any less as co-sharers in the liberation struggle. As its title suggests, it was an 'Indian' rather than a Hindu or a Muslim war of independence. Savarkar wrote to seek inspiration for himself and others from the events of 1857. 'The spirits of the dead seemed hallowed by martyrdom and out of the heap of ashes appeared forth the sparks of a fiery inspiration.' The struggle for independence then had a meaning that overrode all others. Savarkar wrote: 'The feeling of hatred against the Mohammedans was just and necessary in the times of Shivaji but such a feeling would be unjust and unnecessary now, simply because it was the dominant feeling of the Hindus then.' This was not because the 1857 rebellion was devoid of religious motives. To Savarkar, every revolution had necessarily possessed some 'all moving or fundamental principle'; 1857 could not be explained, he felt, by conjunctural or incidental factors such as the undermining of the taluqdars or the use of greased cartridges. The real causes, deeper and 'more inward', were the principles of swadharma and swaraj. The mutiny, then, was as much to protect religion as to gain independence. Savarkar does not regard these two aims as contradictory: 'The Eastern mind has maintained that there are no vast barriers between heaven and earth but the two are ends of one and the same thing. Our idea of swadharma is not contradictory to that of swaraj.' The use of the term 'eastern mind' suggests that Savarkar accommodates both Hindus and Muslims in his premises and he saw the principles of swadhrma and swaraj as important to both Hindus and Muslims. 'The sepoys would take the water of the Ganges or would swear by the Koran that they would live only to achieve the destruction of the English rule.'

1857 revolt

The Fall of Red Fort

A Return to 1857

The Soul of the Nation

The Softer Savarkar