Vikram Sampath is an esteemed historian and the author of five acclaimed books: Splendours of Royal Mysore, a biography of Gauhar Jaan, S Balachander, and a two-volume biography of Savarkar. In 2021, Sampath was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is a former senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and has many many more achievements under his belt. Welcome to the podcast. As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century. Accounts of his eventful and stormy life have oscillated from eulogizing hagiographies to disparaging demonization. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between and has unfortunately never been brought to light. Savarkar and his ideology stood as one of the strongest and most virulent opponents of Gandhi, his pacifist philosophy and the Indian National Congress. Dr. Sampath has written a two-part biography on this unseen hero of the Indian independence movement; the focus of this conversation. In this episode, our hosts Roshan Cariappa and Amit Paranjape bring up topics of Savarkar as a successor to Lokmanya Tilak, the relation between Subhash Chandra Bose and Savarkar, and his forward-looking thoughts on geopolitics and foreign relations. They also spoke about history as an art; whether there is such a thing as objective history and how we should look at idolized historical figures. This episode is sure to be a treat for history buffs and fans of Dr. Sampath alike. Viewers can also find this this episode on all audio platforms.