भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

written in languages other than Marathi have been mostly written by our age-old enemies like the Muslims, the Portuguese, the English and others with horrid perversion of facts, and unfortunately, our Hindu writers from the other Indian States have echoed them mostly through ignorance. 1000. Hence I, at least, felt, right from my student days, that this post- Shivaji history of Maharashtra should be written in English, based on the research-work done in this field till today; so that non-Maharashtrians and other foreigners might know! But, as I had selected warfare with the then enemy of our nation rather than that of the past, as the field of my action, I was more and more involved in the revolutionary activities against the British. Hence, till the time I was released from the Andamans, I had no time to write about the past history of Maharashtra. Again I thought people like Sardesai who had devoted themselves to the writing of history should better undertake that job and it was, I thought, proper from the point of view of division of labour. So off and on, I tried in that direction. Sardesai Himself sees me 1001. By the way, it would, I think, be proper to relate just here a small incident that bears on this topic. I had an earnest desire to see the late Shree Sardesai from my very young days. For, his books on Indian history, we had been reading constantly. But we were all revolutionaries, while he was a high placed servant of a king—although that king happened to be the ruler of a feudatory state like Baroda—subordinate to the British government! Again, he was older; I was younger! Later on, I was transported to the Andamans and was eventually released from there in 1924. I learn from other people that Sardesai praised my revolutionary activities as brave deeds. So up to the time I was at Ratnagiri, I sincerely felt that Sardesai should write a History of the Marathas in English. As such, I sent oral messages to him to that effect, because every letter of mine was a burning spark of fire, which was most likely to reduce to ashes the whole house of a government officer like him. Such things often happened in our revolutionary life. So I kept quiet. And one fine morning, an old gentleman appeared at my doorstep, my rented tenement in the house of Shree Nana Patwardhan at Ratnagiri. I got up in deference to his grey hair and asked, ‘Whom have I the pleasure to receive?’ ‘I am Sardesai from Baroda’, came the answer, ‘whom you know as the writer of Indian history’. I was surprised. ‘What? Riyasat-Kar Sardesai?’ When he nodded his head in assent, I told him how I had cherished high respect for him ever since I had