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

TEMPORARY PACIFICATION
There is no special merit in that. The real glory belongs
to those heroes who thoroughly understood that foreign
domination is worse than Swaraj—Swaraj, democratic or
monarchical, or even anarchical—and thus came out to
fight for independence. Freedom is coveted not that the
country might become wealthy but because in it alone
consists the peace of the soul ; honour is greater than loss
or gain ; the forest of independence is better than the cage
though made of gold. Those who understood this princi-
ple, those who fulfilled their duty to their religion and
to their country, those who lifted their swords for Swa-
dharma and Swaraj and courted death if not for victory
at least for duty, let their names be remembered, pro-
nounced with reverence ! Those who did not join them
in the wholy war, through indifference or hesitation, may
their names never be remembered by their country. And,
as for those who actually joined the enemy and fought
against their own countrymen, may their names be for
ever crushed ! The Revolution of 1857 was a test to see
how far India had come towards unity, independence,
and popular power.² The fault of failure lies with the
idle, effeminate, selfish, and treacherous men who ruined
it. But those who, wielding the sword dripping with
their own hot blood, in that great rehearsal, walked bold-
ly on the stage of fire and danced in joy even on the very
breast of Death—let no tongue dare to blame those
heroes ! They were not mad ; they were not hasty ; they
were not the sharers of defeat ; they were not inconside-
2. " Among the many lessons the Indian mutiny conveys to
the historian, none is of greater importance than the warning that
it is possible to have a Revolution in which Brahmins and Sudras,
Hindus and Mahomedans, could be united against us, and that it
is not safe to suppose that the peace and stability of our domi-
nions, in any great measure, depends on the continent being inhabit-
ed by different religious systems ; for they mutually understand
and respect and take a 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 religious revolutions."—Forrest's Introduction.
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