Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh said Savarkar was the first to moot the two-nation theory that was later adopted by MA Jinnah and led to the creation of Pakistan. In an editorial published in Marathi daily Samna Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has criticised Digvijay Singh for this.
In fact, the two-nation theory was not the brain child of Jinnah. RN Agarwal has recorded in his book The National Movement: “VD Savarkar was freely preaching the gospel of Hindu Rashtra. Savarkar said that India was inhabited not by a homogeneous nation but by two nations – Hindus and Muslims.” BJP senior leader Jaswant Singh has also expressed this view in his book Jinnah: India’s Partition, Independence. In 1923, VD Savarkar wrote his book Hindutva and propagated the ideology of Hindutva and two-nation theory with vehemence.
G. Hasnain Kaif
Bhandara, M.S.