Savarkar ‘never hated Muslims, wanted them to progress’, grandnephew tells Pune court in Rahul Gandhi defamation case

Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar “never hated Muslims” and instead “showed the way for their progress”, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar told a special MP/MLA court in Pune on Tuesday, 2 September. The statement came during Satyaki’s cross-examination in a criminal defamation trial against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is accused of making false and malicious remarks about Savarkar during a speech in London in March 2023.

Gandhi’s lawyer, Milind Pawar, asked Satyaki to specify which parts of the speech he found defamatory. Satyaki alleged that Gandhi had claimed Savarkar wrote in a book that he and five to six friends assaulted a Muslim youth and found the act enjoyable. “By these words, Savarkar was portrayed as an extreme hater of Muslims and as a mob lyncher,” Satyaki said, according to reports quoted by Live Law. He insisted that Savarkar never hated Muslims and that his writings outlined ways and means for their advancement.

Satyaki also testified that he did not know whether the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) follows Savarkar’s ideology, even though the RSS is the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. He said the family had no information about the programme on 12 December 2025 when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Union Home Minister Amit Shah unveiled a statue of Savarkar in the Andaman Islands, and that no permission was sought from the family for the unveiling.

The cross-examination is scheduled to continue on 3 September. In an earlier hearing on 17 August, Satyaki told the same court that his maternal grandfather Gopal Godse and Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse were active members of the RSS, and acknowledged that both Gopal Godse and Savarkar were among those accused of conspiring to kill Gandhi. Gopal Godse, the younger brother of Nathuram Godse, was convicted for his role in the 1948 assassination plot and served 18 years in prison, while Savarkar was acquitted due to lack of evidence.