Claims and counter-claims

T he recent controversy surrounding the Veer Savarkar International Impact Award 2025 reveals a deeper crisis: the public no longer knows whom to trust.

- 

When Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says he was "surprised" to learn that he had been chosen for the award, and the High-range Rural Development Society (HRDS) insists its officials personally visited his home to invite him, both statements simply cannot be true. One of them is plainly wrong-yet the public is left to navigate this fog of contradictions without clarity. The controversy is heightened because the award itself carries the name of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the most contentious figures in modern Indian history. Savarkar undeniably participated in the freedom struggle, but during his imprisonment in the Cellular Jail in the Andamans, he wrote repeated clemency petitions to the British authorities.