Independent Maharashtra must lead the war of Hindu Independence.
Who for Scotland’s king and law,
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fall
Let him on with me!
By oppression’s woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!!
Lay the proud usurpers low,
Tyrants fall in every foe,
Liberty’s in every blow,
Let us do or die!!!‘
After his return from Delhi, Balaji Vishwanath died in 1720 and his son Baji Rao became the leader of the Maratha Confederacy, presided over by Shahu. After the birth of Shivaji, the second great personal event that constitutes a landmark in the history of the Marathas.is the appearance of Baji Rao on the political scene. Great questions of policy were then hanging in the balance. The political independence of maharashtra was won. The Marathas had grown into a power so strong and so organised as to be able to stand on their feet and defend their land and their faith against all odds; and if they dabbled no more in the imperial politics and confined their aspirations to Maharashtra alone, it was to enjoy peacefully what they had won. Such thoughts very naturally suggested themselves to a few maratha leaders and they tried to impress these on the mind of Shahu Chhatrapati himself. Even if they had succeeded in convincing the nation and persuaded the people to refrain from carrying the war of Hindu Liberation beyond the borders of Maharashtra, it is very doubtful if hey could have lived long in peaceful enjoyment of what they had won. But even if they could have held Maharashtra against all comers and lived an isolated political life, unconcerned with whatsoever happened outside Maharashtra the question was, should they have done so? Why had they fought and bled for the last two or three generations so bitterly and so profusely? Not for mere peace and enjoyment. And could that have been ever an honourable peace and enjoyment which could listen with guilty equanimity to the shrieks of their oppressed Hindu brethren outside of Maharashtra? Shivaji and his comrades aimed at an ‘HINDAVI SWARAJ’ and not only at a ‘Marathi Rajya.’
The Hindus of Maharashtra were freed from the foreign yoke; but there remained millions upon millions of their Hindu brethren who were still groaning under it in other parts of India.
But how can the Marathas feel themselves acquitted of mission of fighting and dying in defence of their Dharma when the crescent still waved triumphantly on the Temple of Vishveshwar at Kashi. and how can the mission of Shivaji of Hindavi Swaraj, of Hindu-Pad-Padshahi, be said to have been fulfilled when the alien sat on the Hindu Throne of Yudhishthir at Delhi? The Marathas had driven the Muhammadan crescent from Pandharpur, and Nasik was no longer open to the insults of Moslem fanatics. But what of Kashi? Of Kurukshetra? Of Hardwar ? Of Rameshwar? Of Gangasagar? Were they not as sacred to the Marathas as Pandharpur or Nasik? The ashes of their forefathers had fallen not in the Godavari alone, but in the Ganges as well. The temples of their Gods stood scattered from the Himalayas to Rameshwar, from Dwarka to Jagannath. But the waters of the Jumna and the Ganges were still, to quote Ramdas Defiled and unfit for the ablutions of the faithful as they still reflected the triumphant crescent of the Moslem conqueror.
But did that tyrannical Sceptre of the Moslem break, and had all Hindusthan shaken and smashed the chains of political and religious servitude as yet? Hindu Dharma cannot rule triumphant, nor can Hindavi Rajya flourish, unless and until the Moslem supremacy and strength were smashed, not only in Maharashtra but throughout Hindusthan. As long as there remained an inch of Hindu soil under the Muhammadan sway, so long the mission of Shivaji and Ramdas, and the generations that fought and fell in the war of independence for the past fifty years or so, must remain incomplete and unfulfilled . ‘Then ye, who rose proclaiming loud, that ye will not sheath your sword till ye, had cut asunder the chains the hold your Hindu land and your Hindu Race in abject subjection, till ye made it safe for all Hindus to practise their faith unmolested and till ye have consolidated them into a great and powerful Hindu Empire—how can ye sheath that sword and sink back into an ignoble peace while a mosque is rising on the ruins of the temple of Vishveshwar at kashi, the alien horse crosses unchecked and unopposed the sacred waters of the Sindhu and the alien sails float triumphant on the waves of the Hindu seas? It is a crucial test—if indeed this great movement was ushered into being for no parochial, no provincial, not to speak of personal ends, but for Hindu Dharma and a Hindavi Swaraj, Hindu-pad-padashahi, then pour out, ye Marathas in your hundreds and your thousands, and carry this sacred Gerua banner across the Narmada across the Chambala, across the Jumna and the Ganges and the Indus and the Brahmaputra, down to the seas? And even as Ramdas has exhorted you to strive, strive.’
Thus argued the great leaders of thought and of action warriors and statesmen, saints and sages of Maharashtra, Baji Rao, Chimaji Appa, Brahmendra Swami, the Dixits, Mathurabai Angre and several other leaders were animated by these motives and pressed for further expansion of the Maratha activities. It was not only a question of what ought to be done, but even of what must be done. Maharashtra could not, even if she wished, remain in political isolation. The fate of the Hindus of Maharashtra was indissolubly bound with that of their co-religionists and countrymen on the banks of the Indus on the North and the shores of the seas in the South.
The political acuteness of the Maratha statesmen could not fail to see that it was the provincial, parochial spirit of isolation that led in the past, first to the political and, consequently, to the racial and religious ruin of the Hindu race. If possible they would now strive to make a Pan-Hindu stand. That is what Baji Rao wrote to the various Hindu princes when Nadir Shah invaded India. Moreover, it was not only the spiritual or the emotional necessity of their national being, but their material and individual interests too demanded that they should neither rest nor retire from the field till they carried their aspirations towards political independence to its logical conclusion, and founded a great and mighty empire that would hold together and consolidate the whole Hindu race. No Hindu could remain long in peace and realise his ideals so long as his race was dominated by alien supremacy, and no Hindu could grow to the full height of his being. So long as his race was condemned to servile stuntedness under the over-growth of alien tyranny. For all these reasons, not only these leaders, but even the rank and file in the Maratha camp, were fully alive to the fact that they would not be able to rule at Satara unless they ruled at Delhi too. On the memorable occasion when the leaders of the Maratha Confederacy assembled together under the presidency of Shahu to decide this momentous question of the future policy of the Marathas, Baji Rao rose up and gave impression to this, the deepest conviction and aspiration of his people when he, conscious of his own power and enthusiasm and the sublimity of his theme, exclaimed: ‘Towards Delhi I Towards Delhi! Will we press and strike straight at the root of this growth of Moslem Swaraj. Why stand ye hesitating and faltering here? Press on, ye Hindu warriors, ahead; the hour of Hindu-pad- padashahi has come! Impossible ? Oh, no, I have measured my sword against theirs and I know their mettle. I ask for nothing more, neither men nor money, from thee, Chhatrapati. Only sanction this and bless me, oh King, and I shall go straight and strike and bring down this old noxious growth root and branch.’
The most irresistible eloquence in this world is the eloquence of a warrior. Shahu Chhatrapati, thrilling with emotion, felt the blood of Shivaji rise in him and replied;’ Go, hero of my people. Go and lead my armies from victory to victory to whatever direction thou chooseth. What of Delhi! Take thou this, our sacred Gerua banner, and plant it triumphantly on the summits of the Himalayas and further— even in the ‘Kinnar khand!’ And which was this Geruwa banner that Shahu referred to? It was decked, not in gold, not in silver, but in the Sanyasin’s Geruwa—the colour that is the emblem of renunciation, of devotion to God, of service to man. The Maratha armies followed this Geruwa banner. This was given to them as a constant reminder of their mission, of the great ideal that should lead them on as Defenders of the Hindu Faith and Liberators of the Hindu Race from the alien yoke. Bhawani was their sword, Bhagava was their banner; Ramdas raised it, Shivaji fought under it, and planted it on he summits of Sahyadri, and now Shahu and his generation had resolved to carry it aloft to the very confines of ’Kinnar Khand.’
The Assembly broke up and the history of the Maratha Confederacy became the History of Hindusthan.