Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (the 28th of May 1883 - the 26th of February 1966) was an Indian politician and ideologue who developed the Hindu nationalist ideology of Hindutva. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha and is considered one of the most controversial Indian political thinkers of the twentieth century.
Hindutva is a Hindu nationalist political ideology formulated by Savarkar while confined at Ratnagiri in 1922, in a pamphlet titled Essentials of Hindutva. It defines a Hindu as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha based on cultural and political identity rather than religion, and describes Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism as one tradition.
Savarkar was arrested in London on the 13th of March 1910 on charges including procurement and distribution of arms, waging war against the state, and delivering seditious speeches. A Bombay court sentenced him to transportation for life and he was imprisoned in the notorious Cellular Jail on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, arriving at Port Blair in July 1911.
Savarkar was arrested on the 5th of February 1948 and charged with murder, conspiracy, and abetment in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, but was acquitted by the court for lack of evidence. The later Kapur Commission, however, concluded that all the facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than a conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.
Savarkar publicly endorsed the two-nation theory, declaring at the 19th session of the Hindu Mahasabha in Ahmedabad in 1937 that there were two nations living side by side in India: Hindus and Muslims. On the 15th of August 1943 in Nagpur he stated he had no quarrel with Muhammad Ali Jinnah's two-nation theory.
Savarkar died on the 26th of February 1966 at his residence in Bombay at 11:10 a.m. IST. On the 1st of February 1966 he had renounced medicines, food, and water in a practice called prayopavesha, having written that it is better to end life at will when one's mission is over and the capacity to serve society is gone.