The Wire Analysis 
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi after landing in Marseille, France made a special mention of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He recalled what he termed Savarkar’s “courageous escape” from captivity.
He said on February 12:
“Landed in Marseille. In India’s quest for freedom, this city holds special significance. It was here that the great Veer Savarkar attempted a courageous escape. I also want to thank the people of Marseille and the French activists of that time who demanded that he not be handed over to British custody. The bravery of Veer Savarkar continues to inspire generations!”
But Arun Shourie, a senior minister in the first National Democratic Alliance government and author most recently of The New Icon: Savarkar And The Facts, which busts myths built around the founder of the Hindu Mahasabha and a once-accused in the case of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, has dismissed the story of Savarkar’s escape as pure invention.
‘No stormy seas’
He told Karan Thapar in The Interview for The Wire on January 28, 2025:
“You see, in December 1909, a magistrate in Nasik, a man called A.M.T. Jackson, was killed and the pistol with which he was killed was traced–was one of 20 that were smuggled into India and the British found that it was some Savarkar who was instrumental in smuggling them from Europe into India.
“So, Savarkar was arrested in London and was being brought back in a ship from London and it had berthed in the dock in Marseille on July 7, 1909.”
Shourie also told Thapar,
“What had happened was the ship was berthed; Savarkar one morning said ‘I need to go to the toilet’, he went there and from the porthole he jumped and then he said to have battled the stormy seas, he comes on to the shore, he runs, he’s caught by a French policeman, two policemen who were sent from Bombay to escort him back, also catch him and bring him back into the ship.”
Shourie says “the fact is that there were no stormy seas, it was a steam ship which had been berthed there for what is called coaling – putting coal into it, you don’t take coal in small boats to a ship far away.”
“It was right there and the distance was just 10 to 12 feet. And the two policemen–you see if Savarkar battled the great waves, then those two policemen would also have had to battle the great waves, nobody has even alleged that their clothes were wet, because they just ran down the gangway and joined the pursuit and caught him and brought him back on the same gangway.
“So, it was just 10 to 12 feet and this fact was actually published by the government of Bombay in 1956 in a collection of documents called ‘Documents Relating to the Freedom Movement of India’, but we don’t read, so the myth goes on and on.”
‘History is made up’
In a chapter in his book on Savarkar titled “History is Made up”, Shourie writes about what Modi has termed Savarkar’s “courageous escape”:
“The Magistrate at Nasik, A.M.T. Jackson had been shot to death in December 1909. The pistol that had been used to kill him was one of twenty that had been smuggled into India. Savarkar, then in England, was said to have been instrumental in arranging for the pistols to be smuggled.
He was arrested in England and was being taken back to India aboard the steamer, SS Morea. Two Englishmen and two Indian sepoys had been assigned to accompany him. The ship had started from Tilbury on 1 July 1910. It reached Marseilles on 7 July and was moored alongside the quay in the dock for ‘coaling’.
Around 6.15 the next morning, Savarkar had asked to be taken to the lavatory. He had jumped into the water through the porthole. He had got to the shore and started running. A French policeman saw him running and heard shouts from the ship. He thought that the man had stolen something or done some other wrong and was trying to escape.
In the meanwhile, the two Indian policemen ran down to chase him. Together, the French policeman and these two chased Savarkar, and caught him. The chase extended to about 200 yards.
Even the slightest reflection would have shown that the ship was not far out at sea.
A steamship, it had stopped for ‘coaling’ – it had stopped to replenish its stock of coal. Now, coal was not going to be carried in small boats to a ship far out at sea. The ship was berthed alongside the quay. The distance of the ship from land was ten to twelve feet.
Second, if Savarkar had battled the stormy waves, the two policemen from India would also have done so. Nobody has ever said that they did so. They ran down the gangway.
To see how they would actually have run down to the shore, we can go to YouTube again and ask to see Gandhi getting down in England for the Round Table Conferences. We see a gangway that has been extended from the ground to the ship, and Gandhiji walks down the walkway with a host of others. The two policemen would have run down a structure of this very kind. And taken Savarkar back on the same gangway.
Of course, the jump out of the porthole was a daring attempt at escape.
But swimming across the stormy ocean, battling waves..? Nor are the details difficult to access. They are in a report that was prepared at that very time by questioning the four policemen who had been deputed to escort Savarkar to India. And that account is available in a collection published not by some enemy of Hindutva in distant London but by the Government of Bombay!”
Shourie cites A History of The Freedom Movement in India, Collected from Bombay Government Records, Volume II, 1885-1920, Government Central Press, Bombay. 1958, pp. 448-50 in his footnotes as the source for this account.
Also read: Why Have Savarkar’s Mercy Petitions Attracted So Much Censure and Derision?
He writes that the myth of Savarkar’s ‘escape’ has been in large part due to a book published in 1926 by one Chitragupta, called Life of Barrister Savarkar.
“An entire chapter in The Life of Barrister Savarkar is devoted to the attempted escape from the SS Morea. And it has all the ingredients of the myth. The two Englishmen and two Indian sepoys who have been deputed to keep guard over him multiply: ten picked and armed officers and men and hundreds of European passengers guarded him. Even as he is trying to get through the porthole, the guard notices what is happening: The guard shouted, “Treachery”…
…Mr Savarkar had managed to slip half his body out of the porthole and jumped into the sea. Mr Savarkar heard a pistol shot, thought they were shooting at him and dived under the water … a number of persons including some officers of the steamer threw the drawbridge and landed on the shore. In the mean while Mr Savarkar was swimming for his very life, now diving, now riding the waves.
He reached the shore first, but to his dismay found a steep dock-wall facing him…. All this did not take a minute: just then the chase was on him… He was exhausted by the swimming and the scaling and the nervous strain of the marvellous venture. But he ran on. Not less than a mile the hunt continued..
Shourie continues in his book,
“That they had thrown the drawbridge on to the land … that the chase had begun within a minute of Savarkar reaching the shore. Even the slightest reflection would have shown that, even by this pseudonymous Chitragupta’s account, the steamer was berthed next to the quay.
The two British officers and two Indian policemen assigned to guard over him become ten picked and armed officers and men and hundreds of European passengers guarded him.
Ten to twelve feet of water between the ship and the quay as against swimming for his very life, now diving, now riding the waves. About 200 yards as against ‘not less than a mile the hunt continued…’”
Life of Barrister Savarkar is supposedly the first biography of Savarkar in English, and very laudatory of him. A second edition was published by the Veer Savarkar Prakashan in 1987.
The preface by the publisher, as per Arun Shourie, “suggests more than once that ‘Chitragupta was none other than Savarkar himself! That is the singular reason for attaching importance to what is said in the book. ‘Who was this “Chitragupta”, the author of “Life of Barrister Savarkar”, the editor-publisher Ravindra Vaman Ramdas asks, and answers, ‘[From] The pen-picture of Paris (it) appears that “Chitragupta” is none other than Veer Savarkar.”
Shourie has mentioned how the BJP’s first prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also wrote poems to eulogise this non-event in the controversial Hindutva leader’s life.
Savarkar’s three mercy petitions to the British, which eventually secured his conditional release from the prison at Andaman islands can be read here.