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

AYODHYA
English could endure no more ! For, one day the Nawab
was present when some stallions were let on the mares
for breeding purposes.
It is a wonder that malicious as the English historians
were, trying hard to noise far and wide the incapacity
of the Nabob for good administration, by such silly,
trifling accusations, they should have taken the trouble
to come to Hindusthan to witness such occurrences as
these. Even in their own country, throughout the various
royal palaces, they could have gathered enough material
of worse nature ; and in that case, their time would cer-
tainly have been more profitably employed in annexing
and confiscating the estates of their own princes and lords,
in order to put an end to violations and outrages of a far
more nefarious kind !
As soon as the British Resident received the order that
the Nabob should be informed of the decision of
Dalhousie—a lasting stain on his regime—the Resident
went to the Nabob's palace and began to insist that the
Nabob should sign a document stating that he was per-
fectly willing to give over his dominions to the Company.
The Nabob read the document and flatly refused to sign.
To make the Nabob sign this document, the Resident
began attempts to bribe the Ranee and the Vizier and the
threat was also given that a refusal by the Nabob to sign
the document would result in even his pension being
stopped. The Nabob was overwhelmed with grief at this
and began even to weep. But it was of no use. Seeing at
the end of three days that the refusal was still persisted
in, the British army, insolently setting aside the Nabob's
authority, entered Lucknow and took forcible possession
of the whole Ryâsat, including his palace. The Zenanas
were looted, the Begums were insulted, the Nabob was
hurled from the throne, palaces were turned into stables
for the soldiers of the English and thus began a happy
beginning of the good administration of the so-far-badly-
49
4

THE VOLCANO
managed Kingdom of Oudh.
Though the ruling prince of Oudh was a Mahomedan,
most of the big land-owners under him were Hindus.
Jahgirs and Talukdari rights had continued from father
to son in the families of these Zemindars for generations.
Hundreds of villages were administered under the single
authority of each of these proprietors. They possessed
forts and had small armies under them to protect these
Jahgirs. No wonder, then, that these Zemindars very soon
incurred the displeasure of the Company. With a view
to reduce all to the same level of poverty, the sordid roller
of the Company’s land revenue administration began to
devastate the land. The Talukdars were deprived of their
numerous villages wholesale, their lands were confiscated,
their forts were demolished, and all over the land of Ayo-
dhya one long wail of suffering rent the air ! The Amir
of yesterday became a Fakir to-day. The descendants of
ancient and noble families were driven from village to
village at the behest of a raw white youth of yesterday ;
insults were everywhere given ; whole families were reduc-
ed to dust.⁴
The English claimed that they were doing these things
for the poor agriculturists and villagers. Tyrannous
land-owners oppressed the Ryot ; hence, these pro-
tectors of the Ryot were introducing new methods to
deliver the Ryot from the cruel grip of the landowner.
How many Ryots and how many villages were deceived
by these false pretensions will soon be witnessed on the
4. Kaye says with reference to the Zemindar :—The chances
against him were many and great, for he had divers ordeals to pass
through and he seldom survived them all. When the claims of a
great Talukdar could not be altogether ignored, it was declared that
he was a rogue or a fool .... They gave him a bad name and they
straightway went to ruin him .... It was at once a cruel wrong
and a grave error to sweep it away as though it were an encum-
brance and an usurpation.
50

AYODHYA
battle-fields of Ayodhya. Faithful villagers, attached to
their masters, used to visit these homeless Zemindars and
Talukdars, robbed and driven from door to door, and used
to pay them faithful homage in the profuse flow of sincere
tears. Thus, there was terrible suffering—right from the
Nabob of Oudh to the villagers ; not a place but witnessed
wholesale looting, even burning, misery, oppression, and
tyranny, and did not hurl terrible curses and vowed
vengeance ; not a homestead but looked desolate, terribly
desolate ! Such was the beneficent administration that
was substituted in Oudh for the misgovernment of
the Nabob !
The world-wide difference between Swarajya and foreign
rule was, thus, brought painfully to the notice of
all Oudh. All their previous history stood before them
vividly. They realised full well now that even death was
preferable to living in slavery. How long to look on, while
the Swadesh was reduced to dust and Swarajya was no
more ? They hated intensely these insults and this shame-
ful condition.
At this very time, the roller of the Inam Commission
was working in other provinces in order to destroy the
stamina of Zemindars and Vatandars in those provinces
and reduce them to the level of those classes in Oudh.
Those lands and those Jahgirs which had been won by
the Sanad of the Sword were being abolished wholesale,
because they could not show documentary evidence of
Sanads of paper. That the work of the Inam Commission
was terrible may, to some extent, be realised from this
single fact that nearly 35000 big Jahgirs and extensive
Inams were inquired into by the Inam Commission and
of these, within the space of ten years, three-fifths were
usurped ! By this means, all over India, property of every
kind was rendered insecure. Thrones of princes, Vatans
of Sardars, lands of Zemindars, Talukas of Talukdars,
houses of citizens, the lands dedicated to the temples, the
51

THE VOLCANO
fields of agriculturists—all these were, in this terrible con-
flagration, burned to ashes. Even life was rendered
insecure. No one could be sure that the few morsels of
food which he was allowed to-day would be spared to him
to-morrow. The contrast between Swarajya and foreign
government, independence and slavery, stood naked in all
its horrible aspects before the people.
Thus did the English administer benevolently in this
extraordinary way these vast dominions of our Indian
princes which had been so far badly administered !
52

CHAPTER V
ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
TO allow the existence of a slavery under which
such unjust acts of oppression (as have been
mentioned in the last chapter) and hundreds of
other unmentionable crimes (which have been
left unmentioned, being, indeed, too numerous
to mention) are committed and encouraged
and to bow the head in submission to the perpetrators
thereof, is not this the very destruction of Religion ?
What religion is there which has not condemned depend-
ence and slavery ? The ultimate goal of true religion is
likeness unto the nature of the Supreme Being that moves
everything, of Him who made all beings capable of
53

THE VOLCANO
becoming all-perfect. There must not be imperfection in
man if he is to be like the All-Perfect. But how can there
be anything but imperfection in a country where there is
slavery ? God is the essence of justice, and slavery is
absence of justice. God is the essence of freedom ; slavery
is absence of freedom. Hence, where there is God there
cannot be slavery, and where there is slavery there cannot
be God or Godliness. Where there is no place for God,
there can be no religion. In short, true religion cannot
exist where slavery, the nursery of injustice, is rampant.
Slavery is the straight road to Hell and true religion is a
means of attaining Heaven. To walk in the path leading
towards Heaven, the shackles of slavery must be broken.
This was the practical philosophy which Sri Samartha
Ramdas gave to Shivaji and Sri Pran Nath taught Chhat-
trasala, and this advice to win Swaraj for the sake of
religion, by fighting and dying for it, began to echo in the
hearts of the people trodden under slavery, in 1857, two
hundred years after it was originally given.
Those, who had thrust this slavery—unnatural, born
of injustice,—on Hindusthan, had already begun the des-
truction of religion not only in India but all over the world.
For, what religion is there which has not condemned
injustice ? But not satisfied with the tacit insult of the
religion of India, from the very day he set foot on the
Indian soil up to the terrible battles of 1857, the Feringhi
had been making steady and unceasing attempts to
trample the Hindu religion and the Moslem faith. The
head of the whole English nation was turned at the
immeasurable success which had attended the attempt to
Christianise (?) the indigenous ignorant races of Africa
and America, and they had strong hopes that in India too,
in a few days, the Cross would be everywhere triumphant.
That the English fully believed that Hindusthanis would
be ashamed of their religion when they saw the light of
western civilisation and give it up, that they would con-
sider the Bible more sacred than the Vedas and the Koran,
54

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
and that they would be gathered together in the fold of
the Church, leaving their Temples and Musjids,—is fully
and unmistakably seen from the literature of that time
and from the writings and speeches of Englishmen of the
first half of the last century. The chairman of the Direc-
tors of the East India Company, Mr. Mangles, said in the
House of Commons, in 1857 :—
“ Providence has entrusted the extensive empire of Hindu-
sthan to England in order that the banner of Christ
should wave triumphant from one end of India to the
other. Everyone must exert all his strength that there
may be no dilatoriness on any account in continuing in
the country the grand work of making all India Christian.”
Macaulay, in 1836—when schools in which English edu-
cation was to be given were first opened in Bengal,
had expressed a hope amounting almost to a conviction
that, in thirty years, there would be no idol-worshipper
left in Bengal.¹
The mind of the Feringhi was filled with such contempt
and such hatred for the Hindu and Moslem faiths—
the two principal religions of India—that very prominent
writers, forgetting even ordinary conventionalities, con-
stantly heaped shameful abuse on the two religions when-
ever they got a chance.
The constant insistence by the East Indian Company to
make India Christian was due to a very obvious reason.
Once the religions in India died, the national feeling of the
people would also die ; individuality would die and it is
infinitely more easy to rule a nation whose individuality
is dead than to rule one which has a clearly marked

1. “ It is my firm belief that, if our plan of education is fol-
   lowed up, there would not be a single idolator in Bengal 30 years
   hence !”—Macaulay's letter to his mother, Oct. 12, 1836.
   55

THE VOLCANO
individuality. Thus, the question was one of diplomacy
rather than of religion, and the reason why England did
not lift the sword for the solution of the problem was also
to be found in diplomacy. England had learnt many
lessons from the history of Aurangzeb. Both the strength
and weakness of the policy of that monarch had been
carefully studied by the English. Learning the wisdom
of Aurangzeb, that the destruction of the religion of a
conquered race makes the problem of retaining it in per-
petual slavery much easier, the English had avoided his
folly of open persecution for religion. Hence the stolid
and continuous efforts of the English to make India
Christian by indirect means only and not openly.
Rev. Kennedy wrote at the time, “Whatever misfortunes
come on us, as long as our Empire in India con-
tinues, so long let us not forget that our chief work
is the propagation of Christianity in the land. Until
Hindusthan, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas,
embraces the religion of Christ and until it condemns the
Hindu and the Moslem religions, our efforts must continue
persistently. For this work, we must make all the efforts
we can and use all the power and all the authority in our
hands ; and continuous and unceasing efforts must be kept
on until India becomes a magnificent nation, the bulwark
of Christianity in the East ! If, with such uninterrupted
perseverance, we continue our efforts, then I do not doubt
that, by the grace of God, we shall be successful in
the end ! ”
No wonder, then, that every citizen of India—seeing that
English authorities and missionaries were using such
language openly—began to feel that, under the English
Raj, everyone would eventually be forced to be Christian.
With the disappearance of Swaraj, the Rajas and Maha-
rajahs, who made rich gifts of Inams and Jahgirs to
Temples and Musjids, were also disappearing. In this
powerless state,—instead of new inams being granted,
56

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
instead of fresh gifts of money being showered on Temples
and Musjids as when there was Swaraj—even those Inams
and the money remaining yet in their hands were being
taken away forcibly from the temples and mosques. And
there is no wonder that, seeing that there was no protec-
tion for their religions, the Hindus and the Moslems alike
were pained and grieved. Nor is it to be wondered at that
the blood of both the Hindus and the Mahomedans boiled
with rage at being openly described in official and private
documents as "heathens," a peculiarly abusive epithet.
And yet, there was every indication that the Feringhis,
who cared more for the increase of commerce than of the
Christian religion and were the devotees more of Mammon
than of Christ—the Prince of Poverty, would therefore
desist from attacking the religious prejudices of the people
by open violence.
As if with the express purpose of proving the falsity
of such an idea, the English in the insolence born of
unbridled power very soon began an open and violent
interference with the religions of Hindusthan. Even while
efforts were being made to pass in Calcutta the law for
the abolition of suttee, public opinion in India began to
suspect deeper designs on the part of the Government.
Even before this law for the abolition of suttee had
passed through the Councils of Calcutta, the prisoners
were prevented from observing their religions. A few
days more saw the passing of the Widow Remarriage Act,
in the face of the loud protests of the Hindus. No sooner
had this law been passed than Lord Canning expressed
his opinion that the law for the abolition of polygamy was
to be brought into the Legislative Council, and he exerted
himself to pass it as speedily as possible through the
council. The question we have to answer here is not
whether the law which the Company was going to intro-
duce was good or bad. What we want, in this place, to
say is that neither Hindus nor Mahomedans could be
certain as to where the attack on their religious customs
Published by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 2014.
57

THE VOLCANO
would stop, seeing that the English, in the exercise of
their authority for the passing of these laws, had begun
the dangerous habit of interfering by force with the
religious customs of the people. These laws may be good
or bad ; nor may it be necessary to attach to them the
slightest importance ; but this much is clear that any
changes in the social habits based upon religious texts can
be brought about only by the authority of those religions
and through their adherents. When a foreign administra-
tion professing an alien religion, after making promises
never to interfere with the religious beliefs of the people,
endeavours to change by force the hereditary customs,
the established religious beliefs of the people, on the
strength of a majority composed of men professing the
foreign religion in the council and on the strength of
despotic authority, and that, when the public opinion
clearly and unmistakably expressed, of the adherents
of those religions was opposed to such change, while,
in the Council, the men who belonged to these
religions had no authority at all,—then, indeed, there was
not the least difference between the tyranny of Aurang-
zeb and the tyranny of the Company's Raj. To-day law
regarding only suttee has been passed ; who could say
that, when this injustice was swallowed by the people,
what other laws the Company would not pass ? The
English hated idolatry as much as they did suttee.
To-day the law for the abolition of suttee was forced on
the people against their will ; who knows that, to-morrow,
a law for the prevention of idol-worship would not be
thrust on the people under the pretext of reform ? One
injustice begets another. To allow the continuance of this
system of interfering with religion by means of laws made
by aliens was to follow the lifting of the sword of
Aurangzeb. And when the English had begun to take
up the rôle of Aurangzeb, there was no other remedy
than that India must produce a Shivaji or a Guru
Govind. And such was the usual impression all
over India.
58

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
And this idea the Christian missionaries began to streng-
then themselves. In their street preachings at various
places, they used to say openly that India would soon be
Christianised. The Sirkar had already begun to pass one
law after another to destroy the foundations of the Hindu
and Mahomedan religions. Railways had already been
constructed, and carriages had been built in such a way as
to offend the caste prejudices of the Hindus. The larger
mission schools were being helped with huge grants from
the Sirkar. Lord Canning himself distributed thousands of
Rupees to every mission, and from this fact it is clear that
the wish was strong in the heart of Lord Canning that all
India should be Christian. Why, if the would-be converts
are afraid that they would lose their property by conver-
sion, a law shall at once be passed to prevent this !
Hardly had the missionaries exhausted their sermons
and lectures, when news came that a law had been passed
that all the rights and privileges of converts to the property
of their unconverted relatives should remain intact even
after conversion. Another fact also came to light, that
huge salaries were to be paid to the bishops and even
archbishops from the Indian treasury. The insistence of
every Englishman, from the highest officer in the Govern-
ment to the commonest missionary of the towns, had
reached such a pitch that the white superior in Govern-
ment offices began to insist on all the “ black ” clerks
under him to become Christian ! While the officers were
ready to lay the axe at the root of India's religions, at the
expense of India's money, themselves living on the fat
of India—the Government did not move at all in the
matter. For, what was the Government but Lord Canning
and his councillors ? And, this Canning and this Council
had surpassed all other officers in their holy zeal for
conversion and were feeding the missionaries with lakhs
of Rupees—those missionaries who defiled the people and
heaped unrestrained abuse on their sacred religions. Under
such circumstances, the people were reasonably afraid that
59

THE VOLCANO
a greater danger was in store for their religion under the
British Raj. The English missionaries tried to allay the
terrible unrest by an attempt to christianise the sepoys,
the chief strength of the people of India, believing that
the disaffection of the ordinary people would be no danger
to them at all. That the low cunning of this trick was
plainly understood by the people will be seen unmistak-
ably from the proclamations of the "Mutineers". That
the complaints and grievances mentioned in these procla-
mations are literally true can be collected even from the
reluctant confessions of the English historians themselves.
Except in the time of actual warfare, all days were days
of leisure to the Sepoys. How were these days of leisure
utilised by colonels and captains and other officers in the
English army ? Why, in constantly poisoning the ears of
the Sepoys with talks on Christianity ! Do you think
even this preaching was conducted in simple and decorous
language ? Not at all. Abuse, unrestrained filthy abuse,
was heaped on the name of Rama Chandra, the sacred
name, the mere mention of which makes the heart of
every Hindu fill with love and with devotion, and on the
name of Mahomed, the very mention of whose name fills
all Moslems with reverence and awe. The Koran and
the Vedas were openly defiled and images were desecrat-
ed ! If any Sepoy retaliated on these fiendish Feringhis
and returned abuse for abuse, the poor Sepoy's roti and
ghee would be taken away by the authority of the mis-
sionary colonels. Why, very soon things came to such a
pass that living in the English barracks meant the sacri-
fice of one's religion. For, if any Sepoy accepted the
Christian religion, he was praised loudly and treated
honourably ; and this Sepoy was promoted in the ranks
and his salary increased, in the face of the superior
merits of the other Sepoys ! A soldier renegade giving up
his religion became a Hawaldar and a Hawaldar, untrue
to his religion, was promoted to be a Subahdar Major ! ²
2. Causes of the Mutiny by a Bengali Hindu.
60

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
Seeing that the Sepoys in the army were poor, igno-
rant, and short-sighted ; feeling that when the military
was christianised, the christianising of the people was only
a question of time ; considering the question every way,
the English had come to the conclusion that the chief
attack must be delivered on the Sepoy in the army. And
in accordance with this opinion, from many directions,
secret and open attacks on the Hindu and Moslem faiths
had already begun to be delivered. Not only that, but
some commanders and colonels did not hesitate even to
declare publicly, through newspapers, that they had
entered the army with the express purpose and object of
destroying the religion of the Sepoy. The Commander of
the Bengal Infantry himself writes in the Government
Report that he had been continuing uninterruptedly for
28 years the policy of christianising the military and that
it was a part of military duty to save the souls of heath-
ens from Satan ! Who could dare to say that the fears of
the Sepoy were unreasonable as to the impossibility of
preserving their religion in the face of the attempts to
undermine it, continued day and night by these padre
heroes who stumped the country with port-folios of
military orders on the one hand, and the Bible in the
other ? Everywhere there was a strong conviction that
the Government had determined to destroy the religions
of the country and make Christianity the paramount
religion of the land.
An Englishman, to show how the hatred of the Feringhi
was raging tumultuously in the hearts of both Hindus
and Mahomedans, says :—“A Moulvie of my acqu-
aintance, living outwardly on terms of intimacy with
me, was on his death-bed. I was with him at the time
and I asked him what was his last wish before he died.
He looked very disconsolate and gloomy at this question.
On being asked why he looked so gloomy, he said, ‘Truly,
I assure you that I repent exceedingly that I did not kill
even two Feringhis in my life !’ On another occasion a
61

THE VOLCANO
respectable and learned Hindu said boldly, ' We wish you
to be gone and our native rule to be established, that we
may continue in the ways of our fathers ! ' " ³
While this tumult of disaffection was raging everywhere
Dalhousie himself made a further attack on the
Hindu religion. Even English historians who consider it
their duty to support all the actions of the Government
find it impossible to support this enormity. When the
civilised Christian hero, Dalhousie, came forward to
trample under foot the noble custom of adoption, one of
the tenderest, most noble, loving, and sacred command-
ments of the Hindu Dharma Shastras and endeared to the
people of all ages all over India, all India from one end
to the other was shocked. The magazine required only a
lighted match to explode with violence and this act of
Dalhousie supplied it.
To add fuel to this raging fire, orders were issued to
the Indian sepoys that they should use the new cart-
ridges ! Soon after the promulgation of the order for
using new cartridges for the new rifles, factories were
opened for the manufacture of these cartridges in various
places. A certain kind of fat had to be used for the
greasing of these cartridges so that they might be smooth
and well-lubricated, and orders soon followed that the
sepoys should bite off this greasy portion with their teeth
instead of tearing it away with hands as formerly.
Immediately afterwards schools were even opened that the
sepoys might learn how to use these rifles and also how
to bite the cartridges with their teeth, and the Govern-
ment reports from various quarters stated that the sepoys
were immensely pleased with the long range of these
new rifles.
One day, a Brahmin Sepoy belonging to the village
3. Rev. Kennedy, M.A.
62

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
of Dum-Dum, very near Calcutta, was going to the
military barracks with his Lôta full of water. At that
instant, a scavenger came and asked to drink from the
Lôta. The Brahmin replied that his Lôta would be rend-
ered unclean by his touch. The scavenger replied, “ Enough
of caste pride now ! Do you not know that soon you would
bite with your teeth the flesh of the cow and the fat of the
pig ? The new cartridges are being expressly greased with
these materials for this purpose ! ” when he heard this, the
Brahmin ran wild with excitement towards the camp, as
if the very devil was in him ; and in a few minutes, the
sepoys became excited—a crowd of mad men !—and
horrible whisperings were in the air. Suspicions arose
that the Feringhis had arranged a cunning plot to defile
their religions by greasing the cartridges with cows’ blood
and pigs’ fat. The Sirkar replied that, far from such a
plot being devised by them, the very story that the cart-
ridges were greased with cows’ blood and pigs’ fat was
absolutely without foundation !
Who was it then that spoke the lie ? Was it the
Sirkar or the sepoys ? If the cartridges were really
greased with cows’ blood and pigs’ fat, was it the result
of mere ignorance or of conscious purpose on the part of
the Government ? That the English did not know with
what material the cartridges were greased cannot be held
for a moment. For in 1853, when these cartridges were
introduced for the first time and when “ native ” sepoys
from Cawnpore, Rangoon, Fort William and other places,
not suspecting that unclean things had been used in their
manufacture, had bitten off these cartridges with full
confidence in their superiors, even then the English autho-
rities knew with what the cartridges were greased. In
December 1853, Col. Tucker has mentioned this fact very
clearly in the Government reports.⁴ Why, even the Com-
mander-in-Chief knew the fact and, in spite of this, the
4. Kaye’s Indian Mutiny, Vol. I, p. 380.
63

THE VOLCANO
very things prohibited by the two religions were used and
even factories for their manufacture were opened right in
India ! After ascertaining well this fact from the low
caste Indians working in those factories, the sepoys of
Barrackpore spread this news all over India. Even light-
ning travels not so quick ! Within a fortnight, not a Hindu
or a Mahomedan but was talking of cartridges and no-
thing but cartridges, wherever he was. And the stronger
this public indignation grew, the stronger and more
frequent grew the assertions on the part of the autho-
rities, from the Governor-General down to the lowest
white soldier, that the story of the cartridges was a
mere fabrication.
These statements of the Feringhi Government were not
only absolutely false, but they were put forward deli-
berately with the knowledge that they were false. The
fact that the very Commander-in-Chief was aware of
four years before, was now being openly denied by the
Government. That in the factory at Dum-Dum cartridges
were not greased with cows' and pigs' fat, that the igno-
rant and superstitious sepoys had started this wholly un-
founded rumour—such were the assertions of the English
historians until a very recent date. But now, there does
not seem to be the slightest doubt that the Government
was well aware of this fact. The contractor who had
undertaken to supply the fat for the cartridges had, in clear
words, made a distinct agreement in his contract deed,
drawn at that very time, to supply cows' fat. The agree-
ment was that the cartridges should be greased with the
fat of the cow, the Sacred Mother, buying the same at the
rate of twopence (two annas) per pound. And the sepoys
should bite these cartridges with their teeth ! When this
cunning scheme was exposed, the Feringhi Government
immediately issued orders that, thereafter, whatever fat
was to be used for the cartridges should . be only from
sheep or goats, and that cows' and pigs' fat should never
be used. If these orders mean anything they mean that
64

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
so far the cartridges were being greased with cows' and
pigs' fat. It was necessary for them to issue this new
regulation because they knew this fact. From the Gov-
ernment documents published by Forrest it is clear beyond
a doubt that, in the fat used for the cartridges, cows' and
pigs' fat was mixed, and that this fact was known to the
highest English authorities in the land.⁵ And when the
sepoys refused to bite these cartridges, the Feringhi mili-
tary authorities used to swear that this was altogether
false. Not only that, but they were threatened with severe
punishment if they refused to obey the military orders
through their silly prejudices. But when, regardless of
these threats, it appeared that the sepoys were going to
dare everything for the protection of their Dharma, then
the Sirkar quietly retreated back and yielded on one point,
allowing the sepoys to use a certain paper instead of fat.
But what guarantee was there that a Government which
could stoop to the meanness of using pigs' and cows' fat
would not use some other mean trick of the same nature
to make the paper substituted for the lubricating mixture
smooth ? If once unconsciously they were defiled with
cows' and pigs' meat thrust in their mouths, then the
missionary colonels and padre commanders would say,
"Look here, you have now been christianised!" If, on
the one hand, the military superiors tried to soothe the
indignation and anger of the sepoys by false denials and
lowly retractations, on the other hand, they provoked them
still more by distributing on the parades thousands of big
pamphlets full of abuse of Rama and Mahomed to spite
their religions. The beginning of the agitation against the
5. Says Kaye : "There is no question that beef fat was used
in the composition of this tallow." (Vol. I, p. 381). Says Lord
Roberts : " The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of
the Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in
preparing the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable
ingredients, cows' fat and lard and that incredible disregard of the
soldiers' religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of
these cartridges."—Forty Years in India, p. 431.
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5

THE VOLCANO
cartridges was started early in January and, before the
month had ended, the Government had to yield on yet
another point—a fresh regulation allowed the soldiers to
use the fat they themselves prepared. Further, Birch, at
the same time, by means of another Government memo-
randum, assured all the sepoys that not a single objection-
able cartridge had been sent into the army ! The Prince
of Lies could not have been more versatile ! Twenty-two
thousand and five-hundred cartridges from the Umballa
depôt alone and fourteen thousand from the Sialkot depôt
had been already sent in 1856 ! In the rifle classes in
various places, even at that very moment, practice in the
use of these cartridges was being given ! In the Gurkha
Regiments, the cartridges were being openly introduced !
And military authorities used to threaten the sepoys that
they would be physically forced to use the cartridges.
Why, in one or two places, when the sepoys were obsti-
nate in their refusal to use these cartridges, whole regi-
ments were punished severely.
So, the sepoys determined that, whether they had to
use these cartridges or not, they would not rest quiet until
they had destroyed this political slavery and this depend-
ence which was at the root of all this trouble. What reli-
gion can a slave have ? The first step towards Dharma is
to be a free man of a free country.
Rise, then, O Hindusthan, rise ! Even as Shri Ram-
das exhorted "Die for Dharma ; while dying, kill all your
enemies and win back Swarajya ; while killing, kill well."
Murmuring such sentiments to himself, every sepoy in
India began to sharpen his sword for the fight for Swa-
dharma and Swarajya !
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CHAPTER VI
LIT UP
THE SACRIFICIAL FIRE
IT is then inevitable that we must resist sword
in hand and wage a relentless struggle to win
back our political independence and to safe-
guard the honour of the ashes of our fathers and
the temples of our gods. We must hence hasten
first to propitiate the God of War, the Lord
of Hosts, even as Indrajit did before he marched on to the
battlefield, as the ‘Puranas’ tell us, to secure the uncon-
querable Chariot which he expected to appear forth out
of the blazing Sacrificial Fire. True it is that Indrajit was
foiled in his attempt to secure it because unrighteous was
his cause. But our cause is just, is righteous ! We need
Published by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 2014.
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not fear frustration. Even though we know that to fight
for what we call Right does not unfailingly win through
its inherent justifiability or righteousness unless and
until it is upheld by proportionate Might, even
then to fight for our Right to the best of our might
is in itself a heroic joy which fills the warrior with
a divine intoxication.
Lit up the Sacrificial Fire then, for we must propi-
tiate the Lord of Hosts, the God of War !
Dig the Sacrificial Fire-pit on the altar wider and
wider, deeper and deeper ! Well and good : Lo !
the Fire of National Indignation is already bursting forth
into flames ! As the first sacramental rite, the Sankalpa,
the declamatory vow, has already been proclaimed a
hundred years ago as early as the year 1757 A.D. So, as the
first sacrificial offering, throw the Field of Plassey into
the flaming pit !
Where is the Kohinoor of the Panjab ? Here has
Dalhousie himself offered to help us and brought it,
snatching it away from its rightful owner the Khalsa of
Guru Govindsingh ! What sacrificial offering can be more
igniting the hungry Fire than the Gem of “ the purest
ray serene ”, this ancient historical emblem of Indian
Sovereignty ? Throw then, the Kohinoor of Punjab in.
The next immediate offering must be Burma. So let
its King Theeba be exiled and into this crackling Fire pit,
throw in the kingdom of Burma too.
How do you forget the Throne of Shivaji himself ?
What is the good of its keeping rotting at Satara ? We
must respect the right of precedence due to it ! Help us
Oh, obliging Britania by doing your worst with your
ravenous claws and relegating the kings there to the
graves—where they might yet rule freely—bring here the
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