VD Savarkar, widely considered the father of Hindu nationalism, played a crucial role in reifying the dominant upper-caste narratives throu...
VD Savarkar, widely considered the father of Hindu nationalism, played a crucial role in reifying the dominant upper-caste narratives through not only his views on Hindutva but through the category of language as well. Savarkar was invested in the debates surrounding Hindi in North India and actively supported Sanskritised Hindi over the dhedgujri (barbarous mixture) of Hindustani.
Taking a cue from his fatherland and holy land description of Hindutva philosophy, Savarkar extended this logic to the world of languages as well. For him, all the languages which originated and were then spoken in India became a part of what he called the Hińdu Bhāshā Sangha. Marathi was seen as an important language of this exclusive group.
Being an active proponent of language purification especially since the 1920s, Savarkar wrote a definitive book on the subject titled Marāthi bhāsheche shuddhikaran. This book was published in 1926 but portions of the text were earlier published in the form of articles in Tilak’s popular newspaper Kesari.
Even though Tilak’s understanding of a religion-induced mass politics differed from Savarkar’s, they shared their concern for preserving the aesthetic value of a pure version of Marathi. The following analysis draws its observations from the third edition of the book published in 1958, with the title Bhāshā Shuddhikaran, brought out...
