Arun Shourie’s career is a masterclass in ideological somersaults, each more bewildering than the last. Once the darling of the right-wing intelligentsia, he now seeks refuge in the liberal camp, hoping collective amnesia will shield him from scrutiny. His latest literary endeavor, The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts, is not just a critique of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar but a glaring testament to Shourie’s own contradictions and opportunism.
In this book, Shourie attempts to dismantle the carefully constructed myths surrounding Savarkar, questioning the veracity of his legendary escape in Marseilles, his numerous mercy petitions to the British, and his purported associations with Subhas Chandra Bose and Mahatma Gandhi. He portrays Savarkar as a master fabricator, someone who meticulously curated his own legend to mask a less-than-heroic reality. It is a valid and fact-driven critique, but coming from someone like Shourie, it feels less like an act of moral courage and more like a PR maneuver.
Because let’s be honest: the ironies here are difficult to ignore. This is the same Arun Shourie who, for decades, not only legitimized the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) but actively celebrated its rise. The same Shourie who described the RSS, an offshoot of Savarkar’s Hindutva ideology, as a “precious national asset” and justified its worldview by arguing that it had “produced young men of character.” In a 2000 article, he praised the Sangh for its “immense work in the field of nation-building” and even dismissed allegations of communalism as “a propaganda device” used by left-leaning historians and secular intellectuals. This is the man who openly discredited the likes of Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, and D.N. Jha—scholars who spent lifetimes countering the historical distortions peddled by Hindutva ideologues. He called them “Marxist court historians” and implied that their scholarship was a barrier to India’s awakening.
Now, as the political climate shifts and the Modi government faces some semblance of an opposition, compared to the once non-existent one, Shourie has suddenly found his voice as a critic of Hindutva. In recent interviews, including his conversation with Karan Thapar, Shourie casts himself as a disillusioned insider—someone who once supported Modi but grew horrified by his authoritarian tendencies. Yet even in these interviews, there is no honest reckoning with the ideology he spent years defending. No admission of culpability. No apology for his role in mainstreaming Hindutva or enabling the very regime he now critiques.
Instead, he presents himself as a misunderstood elder statesman, betrayed by a movement that veered too far. But Hindutva didn’t betray him—he was one of its architects. He championed its values, defended its leaders, and vilified its critics. If anything, it is his opportunistic break from it that demands scrutiny. He offers no explanation for what exactly changed his mind, or when. Was it the crackdown on dissent? The gutting of institutions? The anti-Muslim violence? These are not new phenomena. They have always been part of the project he once glorified.
And then there is his infamous book Worshipping False Gods, a deeply casteist attack on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. In it, Shourie goes to extraordinary lengths to delegitimize Ambedkar’s legacy, questioning his role in the freedom movement, undermining his contributions to the Constitution, and portraying him as a self-serving opportunist. It wasn’t just a disagreement—it was a vitriolic takedown designed to strip Ambedkar of moral authority. These are not fringe views. They are deeply aligned with the Hindutva narrative that sees Ambedkar’s vision of social justice as a threat to upper-caste hegemony.
To this day, Shourie has not revisited or retracted those claims. In fact, when asked about the book in interviews, he deflects or doubles down, insisting that the “facts” speak for themselves. This refusal to engage with criticism, to re-evaluate his positions, is emblematic of his entire ideological journey. It’s not that he’s grown—it’s that he’s repositioned himself. There is a difference.
And yet, the media—in this case, the non-Godi media, which finds this idea of a turncoat right winger way too exhilarating—has offered him a soft landing. Lavish profiles, uncritical interviews, and glowing praise have followed his every move. Rarely is he confronted with his past; rarely is he held accountable for the intellectual violence of his earlier work. The same liberal media that would (rightly) tear apart a right-wing ideologue for such views has welcomed Shourie back into the fold, as though decades of damage can be washed away by a few polite critiques of Modi.
But Shourie’s ideological hypocrisy doesn’t stop at Hindutva. As the Minister for Disinvestment in the Vajpayee government, he was the poster boy for privatization. He aggressively pushed for the sale of public sector enterprises, championing a neoliberal economic model that put corporate interests above public welfare. He sold off profit-making PSUs in the name of “efficiency,” often ignoring the massive social costs. Sound familiar? It should—because the Modi government is following the exact same playbook. And yet, Shourie claims to be disillusioned with this regime’s economic policies.
There is no meaningful departure here. No ideological evolution. Just tactical repositioning. He continues to defend his economic views, just as he continues to avoid accountability for his caste politics. His disinvestment push may have been celebrated by India Inc., but for workers and marginalized communities, it meant insecurity, job loss, and further exclusion from a rapidly corporatizing economy.
And perhaps that is the most damning part of the Shourie saga: the way he has been allowed to rebrand himself without ever confronting the structural violence his ideas helped perpetuate. Whether it’s attacking Ambedkar, defending the RSS, or pushing neoliberal reforms, Shourie has always been on the side of power. His critiques of Modi or Savarkar now may make for good headlines, but they ring hollow without a serious reckoning with his past.
If Shourie truly wants to be taken seriously as a critic of Hindutva, he needs to do more than dissect Savarkar. He needs to examine his own complicity. He needs to explain why he vilified Ambedkar, why he championed an ideology that sees Muslims and Christians as second-class citizens, why he cheered on a project that gutted public institutions and entrenched caste supremacy. And most importantly, he needs to stop pretending that his late-stage dissent makes him a moral authority.
Until then, Arun Shourie will remain what he has always been: a weather vane in the storm of Indian politics, shifting with the winds but never rooted in conviction. His latest book may aim Savarkar, but the real expose lies in its author’s own ideological contortions. And if we, as readers and citizens, fail to interrogate those contradictions, we become complicit in the erasure of history—a history in which Arun Shourie has played a far more troubling role than he would like us to remember.
Sidharth Shankar is a writer, visual artist and social impact professional.
