Locusts vs. the gigantic octopus: the Hindutva international and “Akhand Bharat” in V.D. Savarkar’s history of India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reads V.D. Savarkar’s last work, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, and advances two arguments concerning Hindutva international thought. Firstly, it foregrounds and theorizes an organicist conception of the international that is embedded in the text. Savarkar’s narrative contains a social evolutionary account of India’s historical international relations. Drawing upon a history of over two thousand years of warfare, they are extremely violent, visceral and mediated by caste and race. These aspects have not been adequately discussed within existing expositions, which emphasize culture and geopolitics. Secondly, the paper examines the Savarkarite framing of the “Akhand Bharat” problematic and the strategy for its resolution. Savarkar situates this post-partition problematic within a long and glorious record of the Hindus in successfully resisting their homeland’s internationalization. The resolution – the establishment of a subcontinental polity of the Hindus – gains within Savarkarite thought the legitimacy and force of a millenialist, affectively-charged history.