Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday, 25 June 2026, paid homage to revolutionary freedom fighter Damodar Hari Chapekar on his birth anniversary, posting a salute on X in Marathi and calling him a 'thor krantikarak' — a great revolutionary.

Context

Gadkari's post, written in Marathi, reads: 'थोर क्रांतिकारक दामोदर हरि चापेकर यांच्या जयंतीदिनी त्यांना विनम्र अभिवादन' — 'Humble salutations to the great revolutionary Damodar Hari Chapekar on his birth anniversary.' The tribute, accompanied by a video, was shared with the hashtags #दामोदर_हरि_चापेकर and #DamodarHariChapekar, signalling a deliberate effort to amplify the commemoration across both Marathi and English-speaking audiences on the platform.

Policy Backdrop

Damodar Hari Chapekar was one of three brothers from Pune, Maharashtra, who carried out the 1897 assassination of W.C. Rand, the British plague commissioner, in one of the earliest acts of organised revolutionary violence in the Indian independence struggle. The Chapekar brothers are regarded as pioneers of armed resistance against colonial rule, predating the Gandhian era of non-violent protest by more than two decades. Their story remains deeply embedded in Maharashtra's nationalist consciousness and is taught as part of the state's historical memory of the freedom movement.

Leaders of the BJP and affiliated organisations have consistently marked the anniversaries of late-19th-century revolutionary figures from Maharashtra — including the Chapekars and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — to foreground narratives of armed resistance alongside the dominant Congress-led account of the independence movement. These commemorations serve to reinforce ideological continuity with pre-Gandhian militant nationalism and underscore the party's claim to a distinct strand of the freedom struggle's legacy.

Stakeholders and Impact

The tribute resonates particularly with Maharashtrian nationalist communities, historians of the Indian independence movement, and BJP's political base in Maharashtra, where the Chapekar legacy carries strong regional pride. Gadkari, himself a senior BJP leader and former national president of the party, hails from Nagpur, Maharashtra, and regularly posts public tributes to historical figures on their birth and death anniversaries — a practice that keeps such figures in mainstream public discourse. The commemoration also draws attention from researchers and academics focused on the pre-Gandhian revolutionary phase of Indian nationalism.

What's Next

Parallel statements from Maharashtra state BJP leaders or visits to the Chapekar Wada memorial in Pune around this anniversary period are worth watching, as the party typically coordinates commemorative outreach across multiple levels of leadership. As Maharashtra continues to be a key electoral battleground, such tributes also serve to reinforce the BJP's cultural connect with the state's historical heroes. Gadkari's post adds to a growing pattern of social-media-led commemoration of revolutionary figures that shapes how younger generations engage with India's pre-independence history.