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

अमर्षेणोरुधृतान्याशु तेन शास्त्रमिदं कृतम्॥ —अर्थशास्त्र p. 429 “He who destroyed the Nanda and rejuvenated the national armed strength as also the national scientific advance which were decaying under the Nanda regime, and thus caused the uplift of his Bharatbhoomi, has written this treatise.” He has not used even a single word in the introductory lines to say that he destroyed Nanda to avenge his personal insult. It is for the progress and prosperity of his own nation and motherland, that Nanda was destroyed! Chanakya’s great work itself tells it clearly! 104. The anecdote that is told in a downright dramatic way perhaps means only this, that his original nationalistic animus towards Nanda was whetted more because of this personal insult. Chanakya’s Political Activities Preceded Alexander’s onslaught 105. Chanakya had been living in the vicinity of Taxila for good many years before the aggression of Alexander. He had a first-hand knowledge of the political situation in the Bharatiya frontier territories right up to the Indus. 106. Just adjoining the borderland of India had stretched far and wide, the unitary and centrally well-organised nation, inimical to India. Chanakya was shrewd enough to understand that in the event of an aggression by such a well-organised and inimical country, the small native democracies and monarchies from the Panchanad to the Indus would utterly fail in the open battlefield, if they were to fight separately. The Greek city-states too perished precisely for this reason 107. Just then a practical demonstration of the above-mentioned axiom took place in Greece. The moment the Persian Emperor invaded Greece, the small Greek city-states like their prototypes in India, were convulsed to their bones. In the end, it is only when Philip and Alexander conquered all of those separatist Greek city-states, forged them into a powerful empire, was it possible for them to vanquish the Persian empire. Chanakya was not slow to understand its significance. 108. He arrived at the firm conviction that vis-a-vis a powerful and extensive inimical empire as its neighbour, India had only one way to defend its independence and make its administrative machinery strong enough to withstand any foreign aggression and that was to boil down all