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

THE STORY OF THIS HISTORY
The ideal of absolute political Independence, and the
conviction that the ultimate and inevitable means to realize
that ideal could be no other than an armed national revolt
against the foreign domination,—were concepts which in
those days—lay even beyond the horizon of the then political
thought and action in India. The very mention of them was
brushed aside as chimerical by the then extremists, was
denounced as criminal by the loyal moderates and was even
anathematised as immoral by the half-witted moralists!
But these self-same concepts formed the two fundamental
tenets of the A. N. B (Abhi Nava Bharat) Revolutionary
organisation. "Reforms and a peaceful solution" formed the
alpha and omega of the ambition of the then Indian National
Congress itself. Independence, Revolution—let alone a War
for Independence—were as a rule words almost unknown, un-
heard and inconceivably incomprehensible even to the highly
patriotic Indian world. It was to familiarize this Indian
patriotic world with at least these words in daily thought, and
by their constant repetition, like that of a 'Mantram', to
hypnotize the youthful political mind into a sub-conscious at-
traction for the noble concepts, which the words connoted—
that Savarkar, who as a Historian would have called
this book a history of the 'National Rising' or of the
'Revolutionary War of 1857', did, of a set design, name
it the history of "The Indian War of Independence of 1857."
Veer Savarkar always emphasized the necessity in the
Indian condition of carrying politics and patriotism to the
camp, to the military forces in India, for rendering any arm-
ed revolt practical. The history of the Revolutionary War of
1857 proved beyond cavil or criticism that only some fifty
years previously our ancestors had aimed to achieve absolute
political independence, could bring about the active and armed
participation in the National struggle of the military forces and
could wage an inexorable war for the liberation of our
motherland. He consequently felt that this history if told
viewing it through such a revolutionary perspective was most
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