6TH GLORIOUS EPOCH 23. The Sixth Glorious Epoch of Hindu Victories over the Aggressors India freed from the British Domination 1094. This Chapter on the Sixth Glorious Epoch of Hindu Victories Over Aggressors is the last one. 1094A. The scope of this book has been defined in Paragraph 7 of the first chapter of this book. That delimitation itself suggests that in this chapter on the Sixth Glorious Epoch of Hindu victories, it is not at all necessary to give a detailed account of how, while the British had firmly established their mighty empire on the whole of India, the Hindu nation could make itself independent and how it has taken a place of pride as an indigenous and sovereign republic amongst the nations of the world. The only object of this chapter is just to examine and assess only salient points in this exciting war of liberation of the Hindu nation from the British, which have been purposely overlooked by almost all the foreign as well as the independent historians, notwithstanding the fact that they are highly important from the point of view of Hindutwa. 1095. But that too, I have done for the most part in my other books, as far as it was necessary to do so: 1096. (1) It is already mentioned at the end of the last chapter that the Hindus had completely uprooted the foreign Muslim empire from India and Hindu States had once again, been established everywhere and the Muslims did not, in fact, wield any imperial authority over the land of Hindusthan. But while the Hindu nation was thus inextricably involved in a gigantic millennial war to root out the Muslim imperial power from India and while all its energies and time were utilized in that direction, European nations like the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and especially, the English had already commenced their efforts at establishing their rule over India secretly or even openly. The Marathas, who had assumed the leadership of the Hindu nation at that time, had simultaneously to face all these European nations, just when they were carrying on a life and death struggle with the Muslims! Although they had been mostly successful in the end in arresting

the progress of the Protuguese, the French, the Dutch, the English, however, shrewdly availabled themselves of the opportunity, they got, when the Marathas were engaged in the struggle with the Muslim powers, and gradually but firmly established their foothold in Bengal trampling under their feet the weaker Muslim Nawabs over there. Thereafter, they pushed on their aggressive moves and established, though not dejure, yet, de facto sovereignty over the territory right up to Delhi. Naturally they soon came to grips with the Marathas, who had to lead the Hindu nation at that time. In my book, Hindu Padpadshahi (originally written in English and now translated in Marathi) I have sufficiently discussed, from the standpoint of the Hindu nation, how and to what extent the Marathas worsted the English during the First and the Second Anglo-Maratha Wars. The curious readers should do well to read it. 1097. That discussion will make the following two broad points absolutely clear. The first is that from the time the English stepped on the Indian soil, the Muslims never fought with them for national political independence. With the short exception of those with the Mysore State of Haidar and Tipu, all the wars, that the English fought for the sovereignty over India had to be necessarily fought with the Hindus alone. This clearly shows that the Hindus had practically destroyed the political power of the Muslims and had snatched the imperial authority. Another equally important point to be remembered is that the English, too, had maintained the nominal dignity of the puppet Moghal Emperor for fifty years after they had established their de facto sovereign power over India in the very same manner as the Marathas had, as a political expedient of the time, kept on recognizing the same ‘king of shreds and patches’ as the ‘Emperor of India’. 1098. It again exposes the snobbery and ignorance of the Anglicized people who ridicule the Marathas for this ‘political expedient’ of theirs, of a nominal recognition of the Moghal Emperor. For the English, too, found the same political expedient useful to them. These Anglicized people, however, do not criticize the English for this same ‘weakness’ of theirs! The Anglo-Sikh Wars 1099. No sooner did the English destroy the sovereign Maratha power over India in A.D. 1818 and no sooner did they force the rest of the Maratha states to accept their overlordship than they had to cross swords with another newborn Hindu power. That Hindu power was the great kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, which rose to prominence after 1818. It was after

the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, that the English took the field against the combined Hindu might of the Sikhs, the Jats and the Dogras spread far and wide from the river Kabul to the river Shatadru (Sutlej) and to the north up to Kashmir and Ladakh. In the end, the English were successful and the English sovereignty was established from Punjab to Kashmir round about A.D. 1850. My book on the History of Sikhs—the one that was Destroyed 1100. As I have surveyed the period of Indian History covered by the Maratha Empire, in my English book Hindu Padpadshahi, smilarly I had written a discourse on the period following the Maratha epoch in that book of mine, the History of the Sikhs, written in Marathi. But while I was in the thick of revolutionary political activities against the English in Paris, round about 1909-10, the manuscript of my book, ‘The History of the Sikhs’ fell into the hands of Government of India’s Secret Intelligence Department and was destroyed before publication. However, in my books “Prushthabhumi” and this one “Six Glorious Epochs of Hindu Victories Over Aggressors”, I have discussed from the Hindu standpoint all the important events in the Sikh history up to 1850—the time when the mighty kingdom of the Sikhs was virtually destroyed! The curious reader should read it. The Anglo-Nepalese War 1101. The third great power, with which the English had to fight for the sovereignty of India, was the then mighty Hindu state of Nepal. Although the English ultimately won that war, their success was not so great as to destroy that Nepalese Hindu State completely. Barring the English paramountcy as regards the external affairs, their internal independence was unimpaired. Again, this existence of the Nepalese Hindu State was essential for the continuance of the English sovereignty over India for a long time afterwards. For, Nepal was a fertile field, which ceaselessly provided staunch and brave Hindu Gurkha soldiers for the English army. This Hindu Gurkha army proved itself quite capable of, not only in India, but also in Europe, successfully facing the even numbered white army of either European countries. Moreover, in the face of a plausible aggression from the mighty Empire of Russia, which was not only capable but anxious to invade the northern frontiers of the British Indian Empire, the English wished that the warlike state of Nepal should serve as a buffer state in order that such a Russian aggression might not come too unexpectedly.

1102. Only after defeating the Hindu power of the Marathas, the Sikhs and the Nepalese, could the English claim complete sovereignty over India.
1103. The scrambling little East India Company of overseas traders in England, which was established round about the rise of Shivaji Maharaj and which had begun its activities with two meagre factories at its disposal, went on enlarging the sphere of activities and thus acquired the sovereignty of the whole of India about 1850! Originally started by about a dozen Englishmen of pluck, the obscure trading company thus became, within a short period of two centuries or so, the mistress of a mighty empire! During the same period rose and fell many royal dynasties vying with one another for the sovereignty of India. Many sundry states were founded soon and found themselves engaged in internecine warfare and destroyed. But, ultimately, it was this East India Company that struggled and fought on and ultimately supplanted all those rival powers to become the sole mistress of India. How very insignificant a commercial body was this East India Company on the day on which it was started by a handful of shareholders! But all its yearly reports of its assets and liabilities, of its income and its expenditure, right from its first year of inception to the year of its dissolution, carrying forward its previous year's balance and new sources of income and new items of expenditure every year, till after a hundred and fifty or two hundred years it came to include towards its credit side the very empire of India, had all been very scrupulously and systematically preserved in its secretariat in London. And when in 1858, it was dissolved and the British Government itself took over the Empire of India in the name of Queen Victoria, it was most systematically and legally wound up like any commercial or professional concern paying every shareholder his dues as per its last balance-sheet of that year and after paying off all other liabilities!
1104. This continuous process of British administration, this neatness and precision in its work, its capacity to organize and govern, to run a vast and complicated administration, shine all the more gloriously when contrasted with the confused way of doing things, prevalent in our country at that time, our lack of order, political instability and our complete disregard for well organized work! Although it is unjustifiable to show the similarity and difference between the British nation and our own, as they at the time were, by such a solitary and comparatively insignificant instance as this, it may still serve as a pointer—and a very effective pointer at that—to show how

the once petty East India Company could become in the end, the Honourable Company Sarkar Bahadur, which ran the imperial administration of India. 1105. Although the total defeat of our Hindu nation at the hands of the British had always been rankling in our hearts like a deep-rooted and envenomed arrow, we had never repudiated it or glossed over it, not even detracted from the victory of the British people over us by scolding and railing at them under false pretexts. For, we had the courage and ability, which had never died away to avenge that defeat of our Hindu nation. On the contrary, we sincerely believed that in this bitter war between the Hindu and the British nations, it was on the whole natural that the British, who were at that time superior to us in the art of war and strength, should succeed over us. We knew that the success or defeat on the battlefields never obeyed the dictates of the code of justice or injustice. 1106. For this reason, as soon as the British imperial power was established in India, the innermost heroic spirit in the country took up the gauntlet to vanquish the British nation on the battlefield itself, by resorting to some Nrusinhian act of aggressive heroism. 1107. After the British snatched away the imperial authority from its hands, the defeated Hindu nation lay for some time dazed and pale-faced. Even the volcano lies dead and cold for sometime after every eruption. But unless that particular eruption is its last, the terribly explosive substances in its womb smouldering inwardly become unbearably hot. Similarly, the Hindu Nation was merely defeated by the British—it was not yet dead. As such, in its mighty heart, there soon began to seethe and smoulder the explosive elements of many valiant souls, in order to go full tilt once again against the victorious English! (OUTBURST) The first Great Indian Bombardment Sgainst the British Regime 1108. Hardly a dacade elapsed after the British had conquered the last Hindu State of Ranjit Singh in Punjab, when there was great outburst of Hindu-Muslim joint effort to uproot the British imperial power from India. And there flared up the first conflagration of the War of Independence against the British in 1857! 1109. The one remarkable aspect of this revolutionary war was that the Hindus and the Muslims had organized themselves into a joint national

front and waged a nationwide war against the British, forgetting their age- long enmity of centuries together! 1110. But I have already written some time in 1908-1909, a detailed history of this revolutionary war in my book of about five hundred pages named, “Indian War of Independence of 1857”. In it, I have reviewed that war from the standpoint of the Hindu nation. As such, it is not necessary to repeat the same here again. 1111. During those two or three years of this war of Independence, the English suffered such heavy losses that the English casualties far outnumbered those suffered by them in all wars with the Marathas, the Sikhs and the Nepalese taken together, for the sovereignty of India. The brave revolutionists killed so many British warriors and white men! Let alone the petty English captains, lieutenants, collectors, magistrates and such like second-grade officers, but such eminent personalities like General White, General Neill, Sir Henry Lawrence, General Outram, Commander- in- Chief Anson and others too had to pay the penalty with their lives. The revolutionaries dispatched most of them on the battlefield! The English too killed nearly a hundred thousand fighters from amongst the revolutionaries, as per the statement of Nanasahib Peshwa, the leader of that revolution! 1112. At the end of this revolutionary war, the British terminated “The Honourable East India Company”, which was to the revolutionaries a virtual British Government, and which they hated for the same reason. The British thought that the abolition of The East India Company and its rule would pacify the Indian revolutionaries inasmuch as their wishes had been honoured in this respect! So the British Government proclaimed it with all the fanfare and grandiose display that the administration of India had been taken over from the East India Company and that the latter had been dissolved and further, that the British Queen, Victoria, would, thereafter, take for herself the title, The Empress of India, assuming full sovereign power over the country. Thus, the clash of arms on the battlefield, by the Indian revolutionists for about three years had put an end to the hated ‘East India Company’. 1113. Over and above this, the British issued throughout India a proclamation in the name of the new Empress of India, Victoria, the Queen of England, in which, for the sake of the revolutionists and with a view to pacifying them a bit, it was said that after the issue of that proclamation, whoever of the ‘mutineers’ would stop fighting openly or covertly and

return to their homes never to harass the English people and would begin living a peaceful life, would be shown, without exception, royal clemency, irrespective of anything they might have done in respect of the ‘mutiny’. 1114. After the British had, thus, surrendered, though not explicitly yet doubtless implicitly, to the revolutionists in repsect of the above-mentioned two points, there was included in the said proclamation of the new Empress of India, a further important promise that neither the British Government, nor any local white-skinned officer, nor even any British missionary would be suffered to interfere with the religion of their ‘natives’, that the Empress of India wished to treat all her subjects, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians and others, impartially and that she, as the Empress of India, would protect every religion from the tryrannical persecution at the hands of every other religion. This express promise was included in this famous proclamation in order to eradicate one of the most potent causes of the outbreak of the War of Independence, namely, the Indian apprehension that the company’s government was out to destroy the native religions and to convert all the Indians to Christianity with the use of force. And this was, too, a tacit submission of the British to the revolutionists! 1115. Yet another important submission was implicitly made to the revolutionists in this proclamation. It was the discontinuation of the obnoxious practice of denying the Indian rulers the right of adoption and liquidating and annexing their territories to the British possessions in India. For, it was expressly promised in the said proclamation that the traditional right of Indian rulers to adopt heirs to their estates would be honoured. Their adopted heirs were promised the same political and administrative rights as they enjoyed under the old tradition. 1115A. Thus, the British had tried by means of this Queen’s proclamation to remove almost all the causes, which in their opinion, had led to the horrible revolt of the Indian revolutionists. Nevertheless, the most important promise—of course, in the British opinion—and the one that they thought would give complete satisfaction to the Indian people—was that— 1116. All the Indian subjects of Queen Victoria would be treated as respectfully as the British—and that they would be selected for appointment to all the official posts in the British empire, irrespective of caste, creed or religon!! 1116A. BUT THIS PROCLAMATION HAD NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER UPON THE REVOLUTIONISTS!

1117. Why, a parallel proclamation was issued by the revolutionists as a pungent and trenchant rejoinder to the Queen’s proclamation! How appropritate and poignant it was, has already been clearly shown in my book, ‘The Indian War of Independence of 1857’. The very basic statement made in it was that the revolutionary war that had been fought so far was not fought because they wanted the rule of the British East India Company over India to be replaced by that of the imperial authority of the British Queen. They did not want any foreign power—and certainly not that of the British—to dominate over India! They wanted a completely indpendent self-rule! That is why, they said, they were fighting on the battlefields. Although the Queen’s proclamation was exhibited on every wall throughout India, thousands of revolutionists, including General Tatya Tope, Shreemant Nanasahib, Balasahib, ‘Jalka Rambhau’, Amar Singh, Ferozshah and other eminent leaders of the revolution kept on fighting for months together! Only after the heroic fall of almost all of them in the all-consuming flames of the revolution, fighting and fighting till the very last, could that sacrificial pit smoulder low and cool down subsequently! However!
1118. However, the last two or three promises given in the Queen’s proclamation did not fail to have the desired effect on the new generation of Indian people, which was later on educated in the English schools and colleges that were shortly opened thereafter and on that of the thousands of Indian officers and servants, which thrived on the Government salaries. Especially in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and other cities, where the illusory British reforms had already spread their cobwebs much earlier than 1857, the then Indian leaders were so much elated by the promise in the Queen’s proclamation that the British Empress would allow her British as well as Indian subjects to enjoy all civic rights equally and without any invidious distinction, that they declared openly in the public meetings held to celebrate the total extinction of the ‘mutiny’, that now on, the British empire belonged as much to the British as to the Indian people! This proclamation of the Queen was just another peaceful device that the British had found out, as they had used the other one of ‘violent repression’ simply to put down the Indian revolutionaries. They had not the least intention to follow in future the political or administrative policy outlined in it. This, I have amply proved by quoting the words of the British statesmen themselves in my books written on later history. But the credulous and

converted minds of the above mentioned class of Indian people who were educated in ‘English Schools’ and who were earnestly busy serving their British masters, could never grasp this secret and crooked ruse of British diplomacy. On the contrary, being deluded by the preposterous proclamation of the Queen, who mad with victory, had the audacity to ascend to the imperial throne of India, these simple gulls of Indian leaders hastened to glorify that ‘proclamation’ as the Indian Magna Carta in press and public meetings. How absurd and foolish it is to compare that original “Magna Carta” in English history, with which the English people, after fighting successfully with their King, had forced him to concede to them their fundamental civic rights, with this deceitful and profane ‘proclamation of the Queen’, which tightened the shackles of slavery on the Indian hands and feet even more forcibly than before, only gilding them outwardly so as to pass them on as ornaments. 1119. But in my Background to my ‘Autobiography’ I have already dealt, at greater length, and from the point of view of the Indian people, with the period of Indian history, after the temporary pacification of the War of Liberation of 1857 was achieved and the foundation of the British administration in India was firmly secured. Hence, it need not be repeated here! The Peculiar Character of the period the Political Movements of the Loyalists 1120. The peculiarity of the period following the pacification of the national rising of 1857—i.e., roughly speaking from 1860 to 1900—is that, it is dominated by a nationwide movement under the leadership of those who believed that India would once again see national prosperity and development only by remaining in the British empire and she must achieve it that way alone! Hence, this period can be generally called an age of the loyalist politicians. However, even in this age of avowed loyal politicians, the age-old tradition of heroism, which vehemently advocated armed revolt to free the motherland from British domination, was not altogether extinct! It did flare up secretly or even openly, in some daring risings! Even those momentary explosions of that traditional heroism did not fail to convulse the British administration in India and to excite and inspire the Indian people at least for the time being. Only two illustrations of these armed revolts would suffice. The Hindu rising under the leadership of Ramsingh Kuka in Punjab during 1870-74 A.D. against the British and the Muslims

for politicial independence and for defending our religion, is the chief of them. And the second, far more extensive and even more effective than the first, was the one in Maharashtra under the leadership of Vasudev Balwant Phadke. It was a violent armed revolt against the British for the complete independence of India! These incidents, too, are reviewed in detail in the Background to my ‘Autobiography’. 1121. Thereafter, dawned the age of Lokmanya Tilak, which was synchronized by the lethal attacks of Chaphekar brothers on the English officers and the feverish activity of secret revolutionary societies for liberty. The Political Movements in India after 1900 1122. At the end of 1900 or thereabouts, terminated the era of loyalist political movement and began the one of Lokmanya Tilak which might fittingly be called—though not revolutionary—conducive to revolution. To this very period were inextricably tied up in my very childhood, from the time of the martyrs, Chaphekars’ sally at the British, my heartstrings and later on my whole life was dedicated to that revolutionary activity. As such my life-history itself became an expensive chapter in the war of liberation against the English. Naturally, whatever might be said about these nation- wide political activities during this period, from the point of view of Hindutwa, has already appeared in the written part of my ‘Autobiography’ or will perhaps in the one, which might be written hereafter. As such, even when I was in my teens to come in closer contacts with almost all the elder reputed leaders of India in respect of this independence movement. 1123. When I had been to England in my very young days, I had come in contact with the eldest of the Indian politicians of the time and the earliest founder of the loyalist political front, namely Dadabhai Nawroji, in his eighties. Why, there my revolutionary party had to cross swords with his British-loyalist party in our tug-of-war for the leadership of Indian political movement in England. Next to him, I had developed in England itself closer relations with the respected staunch Bengali freedom fighters from amongst those belonging to the generation following that of Dadabhai Nawroji, like the late Shree Surendranath Bannerjee, Romeshchandra Datta and others. With most of the younger leaders of the same period belonging to the staunch nationalist party fighting vehemently against the loyalist front, I had developed personal friendship and ideological kinship. With the active political workers from Pandit Shyamji Krishan Verma, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipinchandra Pal, Right Honourable Gokhale and such other all-India

figures to hundreds of the leaders belonging to different provinces, I had either developed friendly ties or had to fight political battles on many occasions. Lokmanya Tilak, Shivrampant Paranjpe, Shreemant Dadarao Khaparde, Dr. Moonje and the other Maharashtrian leaders of that line were individually so closely acquainted with me that some of them and the staunch nationalist leaders from other provinces, too, bestowed parental affection on me. For example, while Bipin Chandra Pal was in England, I was staying with him for sometime in company with his son, Niranjan Pal. Bipin Babu himself had more than once cooked fish and flesh in the Bengali style and had served them to me with great importunity and had added to his moral credit the meritorious act of polluting a strictly vegetarian Maharashtrian Brahmin like myself. With the future exponent of the ‘non- violent truth-assertion’ (Satyagrah), ‘non-coperation movement’ who later on came to be widely known as Mahatmaji—I happened to be closely acquainted in a fiendly way when he had come to England, where he was then known simply as Barrister Gandhi and thereafter throughout our lives, we came together and many times in conflict—in the political arena in India. And my relations with armed revolutionary party in India are too well- known to be recounted here! The All-India leadership of the post- Chaphekar revolutionary activities had by chance devolved on me at least in the beginning—first in Maharashtra and thereafter in England. Need it be told, that I had developed very close acquaintance with thousands of brave martyrs and gallant fighters of that party? Shyamji Krishan Verma, Madame Cama, Barrister Rana and many other elder and eminent personalities were among those who were converted to our revolutionary views through my propaganda and guidance. Thus, I had very close contacts and personal friendship with various great personalities from all over India. To the thousands of members of my revolutionary secret society, the Abhinav Bharat Samastha, right from its original nucleus at Nasik and Bhagur to its innumerable branches in many foreign countries, I had myself administered the oath of all allegiance in person. The martyr Madanlal Dhingra, Lala Hardayal, Bhai Parmanandji, Chattopadhyaya, Senapati Bapat, the great historian, Dr. Jayaswal, Tirumalacharya, “Rishi” Aiyar—how many names can one recount? Thereafter, when I was sent to the Andamans on transportation for life, I had the company of Pulin Bihari Das, the Chief of the Anushilan Samiti, Barindra Ghosh of Yugantar Samiti, Upendranath Bannerjee, Ashutosh Lahiri, Hemchandra Das and other Bengali

revolutionary conspirators, as fellow-convicts. Nearly a hundred or more Sikh and non-Sikh revolutionaries of the Gadar Party and other societies, who were originally sentenced to death but whose sentence was later on commuted to deportation, also came along with us, to the Andamans to serve their terms and stayed there with us suffering unbearable innumerable hardships and torture for years together for the sacred cause of the liberation of our motherland. Subsequent to my release from the Andamans, I again came into very intimate contact with the millions of the avowed believers in Hindutwa in the great organizational movement for the solidarity of the Hindus as a staunch opposition to the fanatic Muslim activities, which was a natural concomitant to the armed revolutionary work against the British. For want of space, it is impossible even to mention their names! But a special request has to be made just here, lest the omission of their names might be misunderstood to be due to their work being less important in comparison to that of the others whose names are herein mentioned. 1124. Ever since the sixteenth year of my life—the time when I began to take part in politics—I have been personally and closely connected—at times as a vehement adversary—with all the above-mentioned four phases of Indian political life—the Loyalists, the non-violent but vehemently nationalistic, the revolutionist and finally the Hinduistic—subsequent to the defeat in the war of Indepenedence of 1857. As such, the compilation and interpretation from the Hindu standpoint of the history of the period has been fully done in my writings and speeches made on every occasion during these fifty or sixty years. Now I don't think it necessary for me to add even a single word to the published work of mine running to about seven to eight thousand printed pages in the form of books or otherwise, leaving aside hundreds of my speeches, interviews, articles and the written work that is now lost beyond recovery and now at this age—the eightieth year of my life—when I am confined to bed, I have not the physical strength left in me to go on repeating it once again! Conclusion 1125. During this ceaseless and relentless war with the British, which India had carried on so consistently and so resolutely with violent and non- violent means for more than a hundred years, from its first volcanic eruption in 1857 to the year 1946, when the Second World War had come to an end —in order that it might free itself from the tyrannical bonds of British

slavery, our Hindu nation ultimately got the golden opportunity of achieving the greatest success as the war-drums began to thunder and rend the European skies!! 1126. If we have received any real and effective help from any nation, it was from Hitler, the dictator of Germany and General Tojo, the militant leader of the Japanese! It is these countries, Germany and Japan, which gave substantial help in up-to-date arms and ammunition for the army, navy and air force to the revolutionary party from the very beginning, that is from the violent agitation in Europe by the Abhinava Bharat Samstha to the declaration of war against the British by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in the Second World War. That is why an army of hardly forty to fifty thousand strong, could rise in revolt against the British near Malaya and Singapore and could march against India under Netaji Subhashbabu to free it with the war-cry ‘Chalo Delhi’. At the same time, the British came to know that in India too, the Indian army, navy and air force under the British had hatched out a conspiracy to go in for a revolutionary war of independence. Of the Indian citizens, millions were just waiting to raise a standard of revolt against the British. Some had gone underground and begun subversive activities, while others openly raided the British armouries in surprise attack and sacked them thoroughly; others still, started prototype governments and rooted out the British control over those particular regions. Thus harassed on all sides and paralysed by incessant fighting in the two world wars in Europe, the crippled and mutilated British power lost its hold on India. The English people had lost the vigour and strength needed to hold the empire in ice! At last, in 1947, the British Viceroy began talks with the Indian leaders saying that they would recognize Indian independence and leave it and go back. 1127. Of course, the British naturally recognized those political parties alone as the leaders of India that were originally labouring under misconceptions and delusion as regards their political theories, were generally chicken-hearted and pro-British on the whole, frightened of the Muslims and still very eager to have anyhow, by fair means or foul, whatever little political power they could grab, and with them alone, they carried out all their talks on the transfer of power! These parties, too, no doubt, were patriotic in their actions; they, too, had laboured for the cause of freedom constitutionally and non-violently.

1128. But the British had laid down one crafty and far more dangerous condition. The British statesmen insisted that India be vivisected into two because they wanted to reward those Muslims who had consistently and treacherously helped the British throughout the Indian War of Liberation ever since 1857, and who demanded a unified state of the Muslim-majority provinces cut out from the rest of India, as a price for that help. The British statesmen conceded to this anti-Hindu, highly perfidious and anti-national demand of the Muslims with a still deeper and more sinister motive of creating an everlasting enemy for the Hindu nation.
1129. This insistence of the British was basically the Muslim demand for a separate sovereign state over the Muslim-majority provinces, which had been supported quite vehemently by all the Muslims in India. But all the Hindus in India, strongly enough, did not oppose this Muslim demand for a Pakistan so vehemently! With only one exception, all the political parties in India were for granting the Muslims Pakistan, and ending the strife forever. It meant that the whole of Punjab and Bengal should be ceded to Pakistan. Over and above this, the Muslims demanded a corridor to connect their two Muslim states of Punjab and Bengal, a strip of land right from the Punjab to Bengal through the heart of North India!!
1130. The only party which staunchly and consistently opposed these Muslim demands throughout India was avowedly a pro-Hindu party! Under the leadership of the Hindu Mahasabha, these Hindus started an all-India agitation against the vivisection of India, and protested against it as bitterly as possible. The anti-Hindu elements, the Muslims, the British Government, all persecuted them, tortured them, locked them up in prisons, shed the Hindu blood at various places, to crush this great agitational movement of the Hindus. But throughout the whole of India, these avowed pro-Hindu (Hindutwa-nishtas) faced boldly all the atrocities of the enemies, even when they were in a minority. They even did not refrain from avenging the spilling of Hindu blood by shedding the enemy blood and by beheading those who proved treacherous to the Hindu cause!
1131. Fortunately, this retaliation by the loyal Hindus, done at the risk of their lives, did not prove quite futile. For, although the British Government decided much against our wishes to partition India, they had to concede to the least of our demands that instead of giving over the whole of Punjab and Bengal to the Muslims, as per their demand only, the Muslim-majority part of those provinces should be included in Pakistan while the rest of Punjab

and Bengal with Hindu majority should be joined to India as Eastern Punjab and West Bengal. The demand of the loyal Hindus (Hindutwa-nishtas) ‘Let us vivisect their proposed Pakistan before they vivisect our Hindusthan’, thus proved successful. And as for the more dangerous Muslim demand for a corridor—a passage through north India to join Punjab and Bengal—not a word was ever spoken nor considered during these talks of the transfer of power mainly because of the bitterest opposition of these ‘loyal’ Hindus! 1132. And when during the election for the central and provincial legislatures of India, the majority of the Indian voters elected those very candidates and parties who gave their consent to create Pakistan, they proved themselves to be the greatest sinners, responsible for the horrible national crime of eternally harming the undivided India! 1133. Again the ‘loyal Hindu’ knew in their heart of hearts that this creation of Pakistan was the necessary consequence of the great sins of cherishing perverted conception of virtues, of banning reconversion of the polluted Hindus and many other such religious and social vices imbibed in us from our old ancestors. These very anti-Hindu and anti-national practices of the Hindu had already created big and small “Pakistans” in every city and every village. It was inevitable that we had to suffer the horrible consequences of these, our social sins and crimes. A detailed discussion on this point is available in the foregoing pages (of Chapter 8, Paras 421 to 472.) 1134. While all these momentous movements were going on in India, the British Cabinet itself, after taking into account the general trend, tabled a bill in the British Parliament, named “Independence of India Act,” which was unanimously passed. Accordingly on the 15th of August, 1947, the British Governor-General in Delhi declared, at last, with the consent of the elected representatives of India, that the British nation was on that day liberating India from their imperial domination and making it politically free, that of the Muslim majority districts of West Punjab and East Bengal separate independent Muslim State, called Pakistan, would be created. While the rest of India would be founded as an independent Indian State! 1135. Thus was India liberated from the domination of the British Empire and this great Indian republic was established! The practical politicians amongst the ‘loyal Hindus’ satisfied themselves, whatever was obtained was not meagre! Though not the whole of Bharat, at least three-fourths of it was liberated in an undivided state! Quite a great boon indeed! After about

a thousand years, a great new age of national importance has dawned in the history of the Hindus. As such, the real strategy for the Hindus from the point of view of their own benefit and the greater glory of Hindutwa is first to make the newly won Bharat wholly their own. The fragments that were left in the foreign hands could be attended to later on! 1136. Immediately, the British Union Jack which had been fluttering proudly over the Red Fort in Delhi—over the heart of India as it were—for the last hundred or a hundred and fifty years with overbearing imperial haughtiness, was pulled down and in its place was hoisted amidst tumultuous applause and the deafening cries of “Hail, Indian Independence, all Hail to thee!” the tri- coloured flag of the independent, sovereign Government of India, with the Sudarshan wheel imprinted on it! 1137. From the Western Seas came the British imperial power marching on us with the supercilious vanity that with the sword alone, they would conquer empires and with the sword alone, would they run them, and straightway it climbed the Indian imperial throne of Delhi. But, at last, from the very same throne of Delhi was it dragged down, its vaunting sword being cut to pieces! To the shores of the very same Western Seas, it was driven back and was ultimately submerged into the very same Western Seas! The last defeated British soldier, we saw with our own eyes going back to the same Western Seas with his head long down and back towards us. 1138. Thus of all the foreign aggressions over India that took place during the last two thousand years, the greatest and mightiest one—the sixth in order—that of the British was in the end, utterly defeated by India and its political domination crushed to pieces! This victory over the English which deserves the Commemoration by a Horse-Sacrifice is The Sixth of the Glorious Hindu Victories over foreign aggressors! ❑ .

Oh Martyrs

The Battle of Freedom once begun and Handed down from sire to son Though often lost is ever won!! Today is the tenth of May! It was on this day that in the ever memorable year of 1857, the first campaign of the War of Independence was opened by you, Oh Martyrs, on the battlefield of India. The Motherland, awakened to the sense of her degrading slavery, unsheathed her sword, burst forth from the shackles and struck the first blow for her liberty and for her honour. It was on this day that the war-cry ‘Maro Feringhi Ko’ was raised by the throats of thousands. It was on this day that the sepoys of Meerut, having risen in a terrible uprising, marched down to Delhi, saw the waters of the Jumna, glittering in the sunshine, caught one of those historical moments which closed past epoch to introduce a new one, and ‘had found, in a moment, a leader, a flag and a cause, and converted the mutiny into a national and a religious war. All honour be to you, oh Martyrs. For it was for the preservation of the honour of the race that you performed the fiery ordeal of a revolution when the religions of the land were threatened with a forcible and sinister conversion, when the, hypocritc threw off his friendly garb and stood up into the naked heinousness of a perfidious foe breaking treaties, smashing crowns, forging chains and mocking all the while our merciful mother for the very honesty with which she believed the pretensions of the white liar, then you, oh Martyrs of 1857, awoke the mother, inspired the mother, and for the honour of the mother, rushed to the battlefield terrible and tremendous with the war-cry ‘Maro Feringhi Ko’ on your lips, and with the sacred mantra of God and Hindusthan on your banner! Well did you do in, rising. For otherwise, although your blood might have been spared, yet the stigma of servility would have been the deeper, one more link would have been added to the cursed chain of demoralising patience, and the world would have again contemptuously pointed to our nation saying, ‘She deserves slavery, she is happy in slavery.’ For even in 1857, she did not raise even a finger to protect her interest and her honour!’ This day, therefore, we dedicate, oh Martyrs, to your inspiring memory! It was on this day that you raised a new flag to be upheld, you uttered a mission to be fulfilled, you saw a vision to be realized, you proclaimed a nation to be born!

We take up your cry, we revere your flag, we are determined to continue that fiery mission of ‘away with the foreigner’, which you uttered, amidst the prophetic thunderings of the Revolutionary war. Revolutionary, yes, it was a Revolutionary war. For, the War of 1857 shall not cease till the revolution arrives, striking slavery into dust, elevating liberty to the throne. Whenever a people arises for its freedom, whenever that seed of liberty gets germinated in the blood of its fathers, whenever that seed of liberty gets germinated in the blood of its Martyrs, and whenever there remains at least one true son to avenge that blood of his fathers, there never can be an end to such a war as this. No, a revolutionary war knowns no truce, save liberty or death. We, inspired by your memory, determine to continue the struggle you began in 1857, we refuse to acknowledge the armistice as a truce; we look upon the battles you fought as the battles of the first campaign—the defeat of which cannot be the defeat of the War. What? Shall the world say that India has accepted the defeat as the final one? That the blood of 1857 was shed in vain? That the sons of India betray their fathers’ vows? No, by Hindusthan, no! The historical continuity of the Indian nation is not cut off. The war began on the 10th of May, 1857, is not over on the 10th of May, 1958, nor shall it ever cease till a 10th of May to come sees the destiny accomplished, sees the beautiful India crowned, either with the lustre of victory or with the halo of martyrdom. But, O glorious Martyrs, in this pious struggle of your sons, help. O help us by your inspiring presence! Torn in innumerable petty selves, we cannot realise the grand unity of the Mother. Whisper, then, unto us by what magic you caught the secret of Union. How the Feringhi rule was shattered to pieces and the Swadeshi thrones were set up by the common consent of Hindus and Mahomedans. How in the higher love of the mother, united the difference of castes and creeds, how the venerated and venerable Bahadur Shah prohibited the killing of cows throughout India, how Shreemant Nanasahib after the first salute of the thundering cannon to the emperor of Delhi, reserved for himself the second one! How you staggered the whole world, by uniting under the banner of mother and forced your enemies to say ‘Among the many lessons the Indian Mutiny conveys to the historian and administrator, none is of greater importance than the warning that it is possible to have a revolution in which Brahmins and Shudras, Mahomedans and Hindus were united against us and that it is not safe to suppose that the peace and stability of our dominion in any great measure depends on the

continent being inhabited by different races with different religious systems, for they mutually understand each other and respect and take part in each other’s modes and ways and doings. The mutiny reminds us that our dominions rest on a thin crust ever likely to be rent by titanic fires of social changes and revolutions. Whisper unto us the nobility of such an alliance of religion and patriotism, the true religion whichever is on the side of patriotism, the true patriotism which secures the freedom of religion. And give us the marvellous energy, daring and secrecy with which you organised the mighty volcano; show us the volcanic magma that underlie the green thin crust on which the foe is to be kept lulled into a false security; tell us how the chapati, that fiery Cross of India flew from village- to-village and from valley-to-valley, setting the whole intellect of the nation on fire by the very vagueness of its message and then let us hear the roaring thunder with which the volcano at last burst forth with an all shattering force, rushing, smashing, burning and consuming into one continuous fiery flow of red-hot lava-flood! Within a month, regiment-after-regiment, prince-after-prince, city-after-city, sepoys, police, zemindars, Pundits, Moulvis, the multiple-headed Revolution sounded its tocsin and temples and mosques resounded with the cry ‘Maro Feringhi Ko’! Away with the foreigners! Meerut rose, Delhi rose, rose Benares, Agra, Patna, Lucknow, Allahabad, Jadagalpoor, Jhansi, Banda, Indore—from Peshwar to Calcutta and from the Narmada to the Himalayas, the volcano burst forth into a sudden, simultaneous, and all consuming conflagration!! And then, oh Martyrs, tell us the little as well as the great defects that you found out in our people in that great experiment of yours. But above all, point out that most ruinous, nay, the only material drawback in the body of the nation, which rendered all your efforts futile—the mean selfish blindness which refuses to see its way to join the nation’s cause. Say that the only cause of the defeat of Hindusthan was Hindusthan herself, that shaking away the slumber of centuries, the mother rose to hit the foe, but while her right hand was striking the Feringhi dead, her left hand struck, alas, not the enemy, but her own forehead! So she staggered and fell back into the inevitable swoon of 50 years. Fifty years are past, but, oh restless spirits of 1857, we promise you with our hearts’ blood that your Diamond Jubilee shall not pass without seeing your wishes fulfilled!! We have heard your voice and we gather courage from it. With limited means you sustained a war, not against tyranny alone,

but against tyranny and treachery together. The Duab and Ayodhya making a united stand, waged a war, not only against the whole of the British power but against the rest of India too; and yet you fought for three years and yet you had well-nigh snatched away the crown of Hindusthan and smashed the hollow existence of the alien rule. What an encouragement this! What the Duab and Ayodhya could do in a month, the simultaneous, sudden and determined rising of the whole of Hindusthan can do in a day. This hope illumines our hearts and assures us of success. And so we allow that your Diamond Jubilee year 1917 shall not pass without seeing the resurging India making a triumphant entry into the world. For, the bones of Bahadur Shah are crying vengeance from their grave! For, the blood of dauntless Laxmi is boiling with indignation! For, the shahid Peer Ali of Patna, when he was going to the gallows for having refused to divulge the secrets of the conspiracy whispered defiance to the Feringhi said in prophetic words: ‘You may hang me today, you may hang such as me everyday, but thousands will still rise in my place—your object will never be gained.’ Indians, these words must be fulfilled! Your blood, oh Martyrs, shall be avenged. VANDE MATARAM