CHENNAI: Sandeep Hooda dons the director’s hat for the first time with Swatantra Veer Savarkar, in which he also plays the Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.The actor-director says Savarkar was not given his due in history. He also says that claims made by some historians, like Savarkar didn’t participate in the freedom struggle, are lies.In this conversation, Hooda speaks about his admiration for Gandhi, his understanding of Savarkar and how he doesn’t think the Hindutva ideologue was anti-Muslim.Excerpts:How did you balance directorial duties while playing the lead role?As an actor, your communication is mostly with yourself. But as a director, you are talking to so many people and trying to understand what they want. Because of this, I often forgot to take my own shots. Along with that, I was under-weight and hungry all the time and that makes you very irritable.The Indian Constitution is based on ideas of equality and fraternity, which are contrary to the views of Savarkar, who formulated the ideology of Hindutva. What are your thoughts on this?First of all, he came up with the ideology of Hindutva after what had happened in the Caliphate movement to support the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. It was called the Khilafat movement in India and Gandhiji became its president because he felt that it would encourage Muslim leaders to join the Congress. After that, they were given more seats compared to the ratio of the entire population. In those circumstances, there was a fear of a pan-Islamic invasion. So, if Indian Muslims are fighting for the Turkish Muslims and they ultimately invade India, will Indian Muslims fight for their religion or for their country? Savarkar’s stance was that you have to put the country above religion. That’s what Hindutva says. Hindu Mahasabha was created in response to the Muslim League. Hindu Mahasabha was asking for equal rights for all citizens. Congress, on the other hand, was giving more rights to Muslims.So, how do you see the criticism that Savarkar is anti-Muslim?He was not anti-Muslim. In fact, he used to quote Bahadur Shah Zafar so many times. But when he went to Kala Pani (Port Blair’s Cellular Jail), he saw a lot of torture. He saw a lot of conversions for petty things like roti. So, his point of view towards Muslims started changing. Then there was a riot in Malabar where thousands of Hindus were killed and nobody spoke up. That’s when he formulated the ideology of Hindutva. Subsequently, when they started asking for a separate country, he found it wrong as he did not want to divide the country. He was angry with the fact that Muslims were being appeased.
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