SAVARKAR was the first Indian political leader to call for Swadeshi, and the first Indian leader who publicly performed a bonfire of foreign clothes (1906). (MANY YEARS BEFORE GANDHIJI)
He was the first Indian student who was rusticated from a hostel of an institution aided by British Govt (reason was the bonfire).
He was the first Indian leader of India to daringly proclaim absolute political independence of India as her goal (EVEN BEFORE LOKMANYA TILAK called Swaraj a birth right)
Savarkar was the first barrister who was refused the degree on account of his political line of thought by the British Government.
Savarkar was the first Indian leader who cleared the myth British historians propagated and showed that 1857 war of independence was not a mutiny of sepoys in few regiments but a revolt of Indian population against the British sustained over for 2 years. He also highlighted the cruelty of British Generals during that period who slaughterd outright ordinary Indians on flimsiest pretexts. He was the first Indian leader to celebrate 50 th anniversary of 1857.
He was the first political prisoner in the history of world the issue of whose arrest was fought out in the International Court at the Hague.
Savarkar was the first political prisoner in the political history who was sentenced to 50 year's transportation.
Savarkar was the first poet in the world, who deprived of pen and paper, composed and wrote his poems on the prison walls with thorns and pebbles, learnt with Vedic tenacity more than ten thousand lines of his poetry for years till they reached his country thru the mouth of others, and showed how since dawn of humanity sacred Vedas were kept circulating from generation to generation.
Savarkar also designed the first Indian flag to be unfurled overseas (by Madam Cama, in Stuttgart Germany, on August 22, 1907 at the International Socialist Congress, where Britsh