“Selective Facts, Convenient Omissions: Unpacking Shourie’s take on Savarkar in new Book”, Swarajyamag, February 3, 2025:
“Arun Shourie’s latest work, The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts, adds to the increasing pile of reassessments on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar over the past decade. While Shourie was once known for producing works that aligned more sympathetically with the ‘Hindu Right,’ his ideological shift over the last 10 years is evident in this book, which now appears to undo his past attachments.
This ideological repositioning frames much of his analysis in the book. Unfortunately, this commitment to a new line of thought results in selective use of sources, glaring omissions of key facts, and an apparent absence of any evidence, of which there is much that contradicts his thesis. These issues pervade the book, raising concerns about the objectivity and balance of Shourie’s assessment. Shourie’s Eminent Historians, published in 1998, has inspired a new generation of writers to sharpen their historiography.
In that book, he takes a critical aim at Marxist historians, accusing them of distorting historical facts through selective omissions and ideological biases. This is the same author who once wrote, “The major crime of these ‘historians’ has been this partisanship: suppressing the truth, suggesting the false…….”
Read the full article at Swarajyamag.com
