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

the brave gosavees, too! After the fierce fighting that continued throughout the day, the Muslims left the town and retreated while the wounded and bleeding city resounded joyously and thankfully with praises for those Nanga Bairagees (naked ascetics), who had defended its Gokulnath. If at all, one wishes to be a naked ascetic (Nanga Bairagee), he should be one such! 1060. Abdali then marched against Agra and invested that strong fort. In this very fort was fighting the direst enemy of the Pathan party in imperial court, and one who sincerely tried to save the Moghal imperial power, namely Gazi-ud-din, and he was every moment expecting reinforcement from his protectors, the Marathas! 1061. But what were the Hindu kings and princes of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaypur and other neighbouring states, the sardars and noblemen of courts and the million of their warriors and subjects doing at this critical time for the Hindu religion? While Abdali was indulging in reckless and ruthless bloodshed of thousands of Hindu warriors, who sacrificed their lives in the defence of their religion, and while all the Hindu places of pilgrimage were being turned red with the blood of these innumerable Hindu martyrs, it was the common people in north India, and not their rulers, who anxiously waited every moment for the arrival of the Marathas and the relief at their hands from all these atrocities! But the rest of Hindu kings and princes and landlords (jagirdars), who had in their pay large fighting forces, wasted their time cherishing malice towards the Marathas. All the Rajput princes were secretly longing for the destruction of the Marathas at Abdalis’s hands. Many of the Hindu rulers there—significant as well as insignificant—had been carrying on secret negotiations with Abdali’s. But what, if Abdali had wiped out the Maratha influence from Sindh-Multan to the end of Rohilkhand and Nepal in the north, according to the wishes of the Hindu and Muslim rulers in the north! The appalling answer to this question doesn’t seem to have disturbed them a bit. Except for the Marathas, who else were there of these Hindu princes and kings, who could have proved to be the destroyer and conqueror of the Muslim domination? None at all! What, then, could these incompetent Hindu Rajputs and others have gained, if the Marathas had been destroyed by Abdali and the latter had once more established Muslim imperial power throughout the North of India? All that would have happened was perhaps that, a new wave of bloodshed of