Background
Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare was born of Marathi speaking Karhade Brahmin or Chitpavan parents, which is about all he knew of his early days.
Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare was born of Marathi speaking Karhade Brahmin or Chitpavan parents, which is about all he knew of his early days.
As a boy he had received little or no schooling even though later he taught himself to read and write Marathi and Hindi. At the age of ten he began to work as a tea shop drudge in Bombay, and later move to Poona. After fifteen years of hard work, he moved to Ahmednagar from Pune.
In a disused cowshed near the motor stand, he started his own tea shop.
The only food he served beside tea was puris and, to go with it, a chilli concoctions. The tea shop was a success, and Karkare was able to expand it into a cheap hotel and referred it as a ‘lodging and boarding house".
The hotel, too, did well, and Karkare erected his own building to house lieutenant Prosperity was at his home.
By the end of the day he had collected more than Rs.
3000. He and six Mahasabha workers went off to Noakhali. Knowing that they were likely to be singled out for attacks, under their shirts they wore chain-mail jackets which they had bought from a man in Poona whom Karkare knew, Digambar Badge.
Once in Noakhali, they travelled from village to village, and at places opened up relief centers in the name of ‘Veer Savarkar".
One of Karkare"s associates, Ghanashyam Gilda, borrowed a few lorries from haulage contractors to bring the refugees into town and even managed to find some tin shelters for them. And Karkare took the responsibility to give refugees free meals in his hotel. After a few days, Karkare even managed to borrow some tents from the army and had them set up.
Foreign nearly a month, till the Visapur refugee camp was established, Karkare must have given between 30,000 and 35,000 free meals.
But routine work no longer interested him or kept him occupied. By then the riots had broken out in the Punjab.
During this time his contacts with Narayan Apte and Nathuram Godse became even more closer. Karkare and Pahwa then became friends where Karkare introduced Pahwa to his other revolutionary colleagues in Poona.
Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare was arrested in Bombay on14 February 1948 for his involvement in the attempt to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi.
He was present at the Birla House when the bomb exploded on January 20, 1948. After completing his term in the prison he was released on 13 October 1964. He continued his business at Ahmednagar until he died from a heart attack on April 6, 1974.
