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Once lived on this mortal earth of mother India the great revolutionary Swatantraya Veer Savarkar who not only fought the British yoke but also wrote with a pen smeared in blood and pain. And this pen now blazes once more, thanks to Chandigarh-based publishing house Abhishek Publications that has only recently published four volumes of Savarkar’s writings titled Selected Works of Veer Savarkar.

Shares the publisher Bharat Bhushan: “I was recommended to browse through Savarkar’s The Indian War of Independence and could you believe it, I just couldn’t lay my hands on the book, not even in most libraries, only to find one rare copy at the library in Lala Lajpat Rai Bhawan”. As he read the book with great interest and fascination, he felt it was imperative to share it with others. So he decided to publish the same.

The search led him to Savarkar’s brother’s daughter-in-Law. He sought that the copyright be granted not only for Indian War of Independence but for other works too. And the four-volume selection is, as the preface reminds, a painful journey through the history of dark and turbulent years of British domination, reinventing the bitter memories of injustice.

Amongst other volumes, the biographical work My Transportation to Life is a searing encapsulation of the trials and the sufferings that Savarkar and other prisoners underwent in the infamous cellular jail of Andaman better known as Kaala Paani.

Chilling to the bone, it bares human depravation yet is also about human grit against all odds. Then there is Six Epochs of Indian History that traces Indian history right from Chandragupta’s period to the historic moment of freedom listing the events in-between.

Fourth volume is Hindu Pad Padshahi which explores the essentials of Hindu rashtra. In the volume, Savarkar stresses that Hinduism is different from Hindutava and that Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction of Hindutava and Hindu is defined by culture and value, not by narrow definition of religion.

But the publisher’s favourite is Indian War of Independence which interestingly was banned when first published, yet became the most widely read book and a ready reckoner for all those nursing the patriotic fervour. Even Nehru has mentioned the book in his Discovery of India. But then Savarakar who wrote the book in the year 1908 at age 24 himself wrote in his magazine Talwar that the object of his writing was to wage a second and successful war against British to liberate the motherland.

The publisher intends to bring out a paperback edition of this encapsulation of what is today being hailed as India’s first war of Independence. But whether there are takers for the exorbitantly priced (nearly Rs 3000) four-volume set presently available, says he, “So far the reader response has been very encouraging”. Indeed for the young generation many of whom may at best have heard Savarkar’s name fleetingly; the book is a cutting reminder that the freedom they are enjoying today has come at a very steep price.