India, April 13 -- The debate over whether Vinayak Damodar Savarkar deserves the title "Veer" is not really about Savarkar. It is about us-our intellectual honesty, our political maturity, and our willingness to treat history as something more than a weapon of convenience.

Let's begin with a simple, uncomfortable truth: "Veer" was not a government-issued decoration. It was not conferred by a regime, nor printed in any official gazette. It was a title earned in the court of public consciousness. Savarkar was called "Veer" because people of his time saw in him extraordinary courage-whether in organizing revolutionary networks in London, inspiring armed resistance against the British Empire, or enduring the horrors of the Cellular Jail in t...