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.