१८५७ का स्वातन्त्र्य समर (वीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर - अंग्रेजों द्वारा छपने से पूर्व प्रतिबन्धित महाग्रन्थ)

THE VOLCANO
on under Swarajya, performing those very functions which
they were all doing under the English government.
Now that the wheels of the secret machinery of the
Revolution were set in motion, it was necessary to arrange
that all the various motions should be synchronised. With
this purpose, in Bengal, a messenger of the Revolutiona-
ries went to the cantonments, taking a red lotus in his
hand. He would give the red lotus into the hands of the
chief Indian officer in the first regiment. The chief would
pass it on to the nearest Sepoy. The Sepoy would pass it
to the one next to him, and so the red lotus would
pass from Sepoy to Sepoy through the hands of all the
thousand Sepoys, and then the last Sepoy would return
it back to the Revolutionary messenger. That was enough !
Without a whisper or a word, the messenger would pass
on like an arrow and, as soon as the next regiment was in
sight, he would give the red lotus in the hands of its chief
officer. In this way, the organisation, so full of poetry,
became impressed with one opinion, with revolution, with
blood. The red lotus was the final seal of the organisation.
What a tumult of thoughts must be raging in the mind of
every Sepoy when he touched the red flower ! That
courage which it would have been impossible for the
eloquence of orators to inspire was imparted in those
warlike fellows by the dumb lotus flower and by the mute
eloquence of its red, red colour.¹⁹
A lotus flower ! The symbol, the poet-appointed symbol,
of purity, victory, light ! And its colour red, vivid
19. " A man appeared with a lotus flower and handed it to the
chief of the regiment. He handed it on to another—every man took
it and passed it on and, when it came to the last, he suddenly
disappeared to the next station. There was not, it appears, a detach-
ment, not a station in Bengal, through which the lotus flower was
not circulated. The circulation of this simple symbol of conspiracy
was just after the annexation of Oudh."—Narrative of the Mutiny :
p. 4. (The book also gives the picture of the flower).
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