There are some Kukris displayed on the walls of National Museum at Chhauni in Kathmandu which are 500 years old or even more among them one belonged to Drabya Shah, the founder king of the kingdom of Gorkha, in 1627 AD. But the some facts shows that the Kukri’s history is centuries old then this. But other suggest that the Kukri was first used by Kiratis who came to power in Nepal before Lichchhavi age, about 7th Century.

Whatever may be the facts of how and when it was made, Kukri is the national knife of Nepal, originated in ancient times. More than being just a reverted and effective weapon, however, the kukri is also the peaceful all- purpose knife of the hill people of Nepal. It is a versatile working tool and therefore an indispensable possession of almost every household. Moreover, apart from the fact that the kukri symbolizes bravery and valor and is a Nepalese Hindu cultural icon.

One unique thing that makes one swallow his fear is the notch just before the start of the blade. What it really did and still does is to interrupt the blood flow to the handle and to let it drip to the soil so one can maintain grip during battle.

The distinctive indentation serves the practical purpose of preventing blood running down handle but also has a religious significance as at Dashain, the Hindu religious festival, a ceremonial version of the kukri, (a konra) is used to sever the head of an animal in one blow. A clean cut signifies good luck and wellbeing for those attending the ceremony.

Made by the Nepalese Kami clan of blacksmiths, an average kukri is 14-16 inches in length with a steel blade and a wooden, bone or metal curved handle. Its compact size means less metal is used in its manufacture than a conventional sword.

The sheath of the khukri is usually made with wild buffalo skin . Blade is always full tang and is attached to the hilt/handle , which is made with buffalo bone for its ability to be a good insulator of shocks received which laying blows. On the bottom side of the khukhri is carved out the symbol of the Hindu Goddess Kali, the primary deity of Hindus who is invoked during war. The typical Gurkha war cry is “Jai Bhadrakali, Aayoo Gurkhali”.

The symbol in the center of the shealth as shown in the picture represents the Vajra, the weapon of Indra crafted by the bones of the Rishi Dadhichi, and the three smaller circular symbols represent the tridevi – Durga, Saraswati and Lakshmi.

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Puli Thevar was born in the martial community of Hindu Marvars . After defeating a coalition of Islamists(the soldiers of the nawab of Arkot)-British forces, he was taken as a prisoner by deceit while on his way to the Sankaran Kovil temple. He was taken through the town streets, in a procession, by the muslim soldiers to shame him and left him alone in the sacred sanctum of the temple before they could take him to the courts for dispensing justice to the man who brought the mercenaries of Adharma to their knees.

What happened after is nothing less that divine intervention. Puli Thevar started singing hymns in praise of Mahadeva and all of sudden the sound of the cracking of handcuffs were heard by the soldiers camping outside the temple. Disturbed by the sounds the soldiers rushed inside the temple to see what happened, only to see broken handcuffs and chains with Puli Thevar nowhere in sight and never to be seen again by any mortal. Some say he was taken by the Lord himself to his abode……

Not being a man who would give up or prostrate in front of the British their Muslim lackeys, Puli Thevar was thoroughly maligned by the British historians as a man who never kept his word and was deceitful to the core. While these events occurred in late 1760, the truth of the events was never fully told by the Marxist historians of secular India. Therefore I shall try and tell the tale of the heroic exploits of this man who very few Hindus outside of Southern India have ever heard about.

Seeds of this rebellion were in 1736 when the Muslim Nawab of Arcot, Mohammed Aley, annexed the Hindu kingdom of Madura in present day Tamil Nadu. The Hindu Poligars (Chieftans and vassals to the king), being the descendants of the Cholas and Pandyas, were in no mood to accept the lordship of a usurper and Adharmika refused to compromise with him or pay taxes of homage to him.

Over the next  twenty years s confederation of seventy seven Poligars belonging to the Marvar community joint hands to defy the dictate of the usurper Mohammed Aley. The Poligars who lived in the vicinity of their hill fortress surrounded by forests and armed with ammunition, guns and traditional Hindu weapons attacked Mohammed’s forces at will defying him at each opportunity.

Scared of the might and defiance of the Hindu Poligars Mohammed the Nawab decided to find shelter in the British camp and beg them for help. The British eyeing an opportunity to grab Hindu lands that lay between Trichinapally and Cape Comorin decided to take nawab under their wing. This was a mistake that both the British and their lackey the nawab would go on to regret.

The British sent a large army commanded by Colonel Heron to assist their muslim vassal, Mohammed. On reaching the Poligar country this army started acting like street thugs, looting ordinary village folks, burning homes and even devastating the Hindu temples and shrines. Continuing his march forward Heron managed to used his skills of deceit to fight the Polingars into submission. The strongest Polingar was the Kattabomman of Panjalakurichi. He too surrendered and as he did not pay the full sum demanded by the British as tribute, he surrendered some of his close male relatives as collateral.

Assuming their victory was complete the British, under Heron, decided to head back to their base. However on their way back home Heron came up with an idea and the idea was to seek the submission of a minor Poligar of Nelkattumseval, his name was Puli Thevar. While the owner of a very small estate his influence amongst the Western Polingars was immense due to the fame of his abilities as an able administrator and considerable warrior.

What followed after this idea were a series of attacks, sieges and battles.

The First Siege: Nelkattumseval 1755 CE

No sooner had Puli Thevar refused the British demand for the payment of fief as an acceptance of their lordship over him, they launched an attack on Thevar. Puli Thevar’s informant in the British camp, the interpreter of Heron, sent him news that the British were short on supplies and did not have much heavy artillery. Hearing this Thevar decided to hold the British attack further.

Although Heron ordered a massive bombardment on Puli Thevar’s fort his forces couldn’t make much progress due to the thick walls of the fort. Forced to acknowledge that he couldn’t raid the fort, Heron  sent a message to the Puli asking for a paltry sum of rupees twenty thousand to be paid. However Puli who by now understood the British game replied thus

“ My estate does not have that much income….. besides  I know the value of  money and don’t expect me to pay you even a single rupee”

After facing such a humiliating defeat at the hands of the brave Marvar, the British ducked tail and retreated. However this defeat of the British ignited a fire of rebellion that would make the foreigners pay a very heavy price before it went out in a blaze of glory in 1763. The Polingars emboldened by their fellow Hindu’s victory soon joined hands against the British and started an all out revolt under the able leadership of Puli Thevar.

After the retreat of Heron was complete, Thevar gathered his Marwars and let them loose to seize the entire countryside. The Marwars who were the ablest of warriors, famed for their ferocity in war and predatory warfare started ambushing and looting the British units burning down the villages that had supported the British in their war effort and overran the entire countryside.

The Second Battle:  Kalakadu, 1755 CE

Understanding fully well that the British would not back down and would come back to attack his people again, Puli Thevar sent one of his generals to Travancore to win over the support of Maharajadhiraj Marathanda Varma who was the regent of Travancore. The general managed to convince His Majesty to support the Polingar confederacy lead by Puli Thevar and returned back with 4000 troops.

These troops were then added to his existing armies in order to fight the forces of Mahfuz Khan, the younger brother of Mohammed Aley and a British appointed governor of Madura. While Mahfuz Khan had a well equipped army, owing to the reinforcements received by the British , they were no match for Thevar’s much smaller army’s bravery or morale. These early victories boosted the morale of Thevar and he besieged the fort at Kalakadu. In order to end this siege Mahfuz Khan sent an entire division of cavalry. It was at this critical juncture that the Travancore forces had to retreat and head back home to control a major rebellion lead by Moplahs back in Travancore. With a large chunk of his men lost, Thevar knew that this battle was lost and so he retreated.

Second Siege of Nelkattumseval, 1755-1756 CE

Being very well aware that without the reinforcements from Travancore his army stood little chance against the gigantic cavalary of Mahfuz Khan, Thevar assembled all his troops and guns inside his fort complex at Nelkattumseval. Taking advantage of the situation the devious Khan sent his troops to devastate the Marvaras who had given him a hard time Kalakadu. The Muslim troops reestablished control of Arcot, which till then had been devastated by the Marvaras, and surrounded Puli Thevar in fort.

Thevar quickly asked his general to Mudemiah to engage Travancore once again, who by then had subdued the rebellion. The Travancore troops came out victorious, however knowing the sort of pain Puli Thevar could be Mahfuz went ahead with the siege of Thevar’s fort as he couldn’t afford to loose Puli.

Since this siege lasted quite some time Mahfuz’s troops ran short of supplies and begged the British for more. Seizing this opportunity, Puli Thevar instructed his crack troops to attack the British convoy. They more than obliged and looted the caravans and increasing Mahfuz Khan’s misery. Mahfuz who was by now in a state of shock decided to head back to his base in Tirunelveli in order to meet payroll and supply his troops.

Now a confident Thevar decided that he must launch an assault to fully obliterate his Arcot-British enemies. For this purpose he persuaded the Eastern Poligar council to join hands with him so that they could together fight their common enemies. Sadly the strongest of the Eastern Poligar ,Kattabomman, still had his relatives as captives under the Nawab. Out of fear for loosing his loved ones he decided to opt out of this council, despite wanting to join hands with Puli Thevar. However all the Madura Poligars joined hands with Puli Thevar and ensured troops in case of a war. Thereafter Puli went on to ask the Poligars of Nattam tojoin him.

This confederacy of Polingars had a single point agenda which was to seize the ancient and strategic city of Madura, as that would be a symbolic restoration of pre-1736 order in addition to enabling them to oust the Anglo-Muslim garrisons and seize control the country south up to Cape Comorin. Their objective was to restore Hindu rule in what was once the kingdom of Madura.

British soon learnt of this preparation for war and they were alarmed by the sheer scale of ambitions of Thevar. They blamed Mahfuz’s incompetency for this dangerous situation and resolved to intervene directly. They dispatched 1000 sepoys under Yusuf Khan and also put Mafuz’s armies under Yusuf Khan’s orders.

Siege of Srivilliputtur, 1756

By the time these sepoys arrived, Puli Thevar had already started out on his victory march leading the Marwar confederate army. They had assembled in Nelkattumseval and were supposed to attack Madura in order to recapture it from the Mohammed Aley, the usurper. As they marched, they faced the fort of Srivilliputtur, which they had seize if the wished to march on to Madura.

This fort was under the lordship of one Abdul Rahim and he was confident that he could easily rout Puli Thevar and his marvars. Initially they engaged in an open battle with Thevar’s forces but found themselves to be no match for the Hindu skill and bravery and hence retreated back to their fortress. Puli Thevar had them surrounded so badly that the Arkot troops got demoralized and all of them, including Rahim Khan, fled to save their lives.

Seing this victory the rest of the Polingars appealed to Puli Thevar to change the original plan of to march from Nelkattumseval to Madura and instead seize Tirunelveli in the south and then move to Madura. Thevar agreed and this turned out to be a catastrophic decision. At that time Madura was held lightly by Arckot troops and a siege of on Madura would have passed the entire kingdom into Puli Thevar’s hands. As fate would have it Mahfuz Khan, with his strong troops in place, in Tirunelveli persuaded Kattabomman to support him in the war initiative and promised him land grants, riches, etc in return. As Kattabomman led the Eastern Poligars, war that began as a war of independence now became a civil war.

Battle of Tirunelveli, 1756

Despite the sabotage by his own Hindu brothers, The Polingars of the East, Thevar didn’t loose his resolve to meet the enemy forces in battle. Both sides had an equal number of men, totaling forty thousand, facing each other. However Mahfuz had an great advantage over the Poligars due to his superior calavry which was supported by his British masters. Not loosing hope and with the name of Mahadeva on his lips Puli Thevar and his brave twenty thousands left upon the enemy, however they were no match for the cavalry that supported Mahfuz. Had it not been for Kattabomman’s greed the Arcot troops, it would have been a funeral for Mahfuz and his troops and almost all of the entire the lands of Thamiz would have been in the hands of the Hindus. Sadly Thevar’s rank crumbled and he and his men returned back to Nelkattumseval.

After this catastrophe, Puli Thevar noticed a drop of morale among his fellow Poligars. He himself evaluated the situation and decided on a clever policy. Thevar sent out affirmations of loyalty to the Nawab and the British and even met the Tirtarappa Mudali, a fellow Hindu belonging to the Vellala community and Nawab’s new viceroy in Madura and paid him a large sum as tribute. Meanwhile, he let his Maravas loose once more to loot and devastate enemy held territories once more. When Arcot sepoys tried to control them, they looted Arcot camps as Arcot troops watched helpless. Thevar was determined that the British and the Nawab should never know any peace.

This came to the attention of Yusuf Khan, the military commander of the Mohammed Aley the Nawab’s trops. He ordered Thevar to return back to his fort at Nelkattumseva. Thevar instead met Kattabomman and rallied the Polingars again to fight the enemies of Dharma and the usurpers of Hindu lands. Puli Thevar managed to assemble ten thousand men within a short span of time proceeded towards a forest that was under Kattabomman’s protectorate and stretched to the outskirts of Tinnevelly.

Capture of Tirunelveli, 1756

Thevar being an astute militant commander decided to take this difficult route instead of a straight highway inorder to conceal the movement of his troops and to take the enemy by surprise.His plan was based in the information of a spy’z report that Mudali had camped his bulk force some twenty miles away where he anticipated Thevar;’s attack. Thevar decided to wait till nightfall before entering Tinnevelly. By dawn they had infiltrated into the town in small bands through unguarded points.

By sunrise Thevar and his men had seized the town of Tirunelveli. Mudali who had heard that he had been outwitted by Thevar, decided to assemble his troops at Palamkotta fort instead of attacking Tirunelveli. Thevar had no artillery so ordered his cavalry to encircle the fort and burn a large area around the fort to deprive them of supplies. His troops could not scale the fort walls because of gun-fire by Mudali’s troops; their only option is to wait and starve the enemy.

In the meantime Yusuf Khan who heard of the fall of Tirunelveli gathered his troops to attack Puli Thevar. On being informed of this Puli Thevar had to abandon the fort and move to Gangai Konda, north of Tirunelveli.

Thevar’s troops attacked from all sides but suffered huge losses as Yusuf Khan’s artillery took its toll on Thevar’s ranks. Thevar realised that the battle was lost and ordered a retreat. Thevar’s army split into three; the forces of Polygars under Thevar fled into the jungle, one of his generals with his horsemen went to Madura and another retreated towards Srivilliputtur.

Puli Thevar had not lost hope. He opened talks with agents of Mysore at Dindigul and offered them half a million (five lakh) rupees in exchange for military help. He also tried to persuade the corrupt officers of Mahfuz Khan to give up Cholavandan, a region through which the only road between Dindigal and Madura passed through a mountain defile. In order to tempt Mahfuz Khan to join his side, Thevar also tempted him with promise of high office in Mysore.

Thevar’s agenda was to out both the British and their underling the Nawab Mohammed Aley and restore the throne to the rightful Hindu heir of ruling dynasty of Madura. The British got a scent of his plans for the formation of a third confederacy and the dispatched a huge force under Yusuf Khan and Mudali.

A third of this force was posted in Tirunelveli and another third was aseembled in the fort of Palamkotta. Yusuf Khan’s strategy in this battle was to overwhelm Thevar into submission by excessive use of force so that the rest of the Poligars would be dissuaded to join forces with him. Yusuf sent his envoys to Puli Thevar’s camp to invite him for negotiations.

Thevar accepted the invitation and sent three hundred of his marvars to the Muslim camp in order to conduct negotiations, which failed. As result Yusuf decided to send Alagappa  to settle matters with Thevar. Yusuf Khan’s envoy offered large lands as grants to Puli Thevar if we gave an affirmative to the peace deal. Thevar was too shrewd to fall for these lies, as he was fully aware of the lying and deceit nature enshrined in the ethos of the enemy. However instead of refusing the offer outright what he did was was to send his main army to join his generals and the sent small attack teams to go and ravage the enemy territories west of Tirunelveli, intending the negotiations to fail.

Soon Thevar got what he wanted as the nawab’s men killed some of the envoys he had sent to the Arckot camp for negotiations, accusing them of stealing their horses and oxen. Thevar used this an excuse to launch a full fledged attack on the Nawab.In the meantime Mahfuz Khan ,being unscrupulous character, understoof that his existence depended on the good will of Puli Thevar so he came to Nelkettuseval with troops by the end of 1756. Several of the NAwab;s officers also revolted. However since Mahfuz Khan didn’t have the stomach for more battle he was chased away by the British after they left leaving the Nawab in charge.This was exactly the opportunity that Puli Thevar was looking for as he had completed his preparations for the siege of Madura by that time and without the British reinforcements Mohammed Aley the nawab’s forces wouldn’t be able to hold out for long.

Second Capture of Tirunelveli, 1756

In early 1757, Thevar along with Mahfuz Khan and supported by many Polygars marched towards Tirunelveli for the third time at the head of an army of 10,000 men. They camped near Tirunelveli but did not attempt to capture the town. Thevar remembered well what would happen if a largely primitive force engaged with the well-equipped army which held Tirunelveli.

Instead, in an effort to seize the country-side, Thevar sent messages to Mudalis, or tax collectors, that from now on he was in charge and that they must pay tax to him.Talks were opened with the Raja of Travancore to persuade him into lending support the war efforts of the Poligar confederacy in exchange for which Thevar promised him those territories on which Raja of Travancore coveted.

Soon the troops that held Tirunelveli marched to Madura and Mahfuz Khan marched into the abandoned town. Mahfuz was so intoxicated by this success-in reality only luck-that he on his own, ordered his men to assault the nearby fort of Palamkotta; his men suffered staggering losses. The commandant of Palayamkotta enticed Kattabomman, the rank opportunist to support him in exchange for lucrative land grants.

Kattabomman’s troops routed Mahfuz’s troops who camped some distance away from the fort. After this Kattabomman retreated but Yusuf Khan came to the scene. Mahfuz Khan fled the scene to Nelkettumseval to join Thevar, who had left much earlier as he understood that plans were not working as he had envisaged.

In the summer of 1758, Puli Thevar, for the fourth time, was ready to clash with the British and Nawab. Puli Thevar was supported by Poligars of Wadagiri, Kotaltava, Naduvakurichi and Sorandai. Ettaiyapuram Poligar also joined Thevar’s confederacy and soon confederates persuaded the Polygar of Settur to join them.

Stand At Settur & Aftermath, 1759

Puli Thevar camped his troops inside the Settur fort, only 15 miles from Srivilliputtur and their joint force ravaged the enemy-held surrounding zone. Yusuf Khan besieged the Settur fort, whose Poligar lost nerve and expelled Thevar’s troops, paid a fine and surrendered.

Thevar’s troops re-grouped and they seized all enemy outposts from Nelkettumseval to Tirunelveli and massacred the garrisons they overran. This great success elated Thevar and his confederates and they attacked and captured the Uttumalai fort held by a British lackey Poligar and prepared to capture Palamkotta and Tirunelveli.

The arrival of Yusuf Khan’s troops at Srivilliputtur checked their progress. Instead of an open fight, Thevar wisely chose to strengthen the chain of posts he had captured. He also sent troops to Nelkettumseval to prepare for defense and spread out his troops around Yusuf’s army in order to harass Yusuf’s troops. Yusuf had far greater troops and soon he recaptured all the outposts seized by Thevar and then he marched and destroyed much of Poligar country by fire and sword. But even so his attempt to reduce Poligars went only slowly as Poligars retreated into their strong impregnable forts. Soon Yusuf was forced to retreat because of orders from British authorities.

In 1759, Thevar took revenge as he marched towards Palamkotta and the garrison troops came out and fought Thevar’s men. Thevar devastated his enemy’s force in open field, but retired-as he knew that it would be nearly impossible to storm a well-defended fort. The incident was an embarrassment and shock to the British. Thevar’s troops overran the countryside from Nattam to Travacore also. Enemy garrisons were safe only in their forts. They once more deputized Yusuf Khan to crush Puli Thevar. Thevar was worried that Mahfuz Khan might switch sides as he was a rank opportunist and so kept him under close watch.

Second Struggle with Yusuf Khan

The pro-British Kattabomman died and the new Kattabomman loathed them. He, as the leader of Eastern Poligars, pledged support to Puli Thevar, the undisputed leader of Western Poligars. This union was aimed to meet the threat of Yusuf Khan.

Yusuf Khan could have been driven back easily if he had to face so mighty a confederacy alone. Some Poligars were eager to collaborate with enemy. Yusuf came into Poligar country with only 1000 men but soon his army grew to 4000 with support from these fallen Hindu Poligars. Even so he was not ready.

He waited for reinforcements to come. His strategy, till he received reinforcements, was to prevent the armies of Puli Thevar and Kattabomman from joining. He sent a heavily armed force into Ettaiyapuram with this task-they were to fight and block Eastern Polygars’ troops so that he could deal with Puli Thevar and men separately.

Once fully prepared, Yusuf Khan marched on. His force captured the strategic fort of Kollarpetti and reached Tirunelveli. Mahfuz Khan requested a pardon from Yusuf Khan and a jagir for himself if he left Thevar’s camp. Yusuf Khan assured him that his demands would be met. Puli Thevar surprised an enemy army at Sorandai and massacred and looted it. Yusuf immediately sent another force to retaliate, but Thevar had left by that time. Travancore troops began incursions into lands between Cape Comorin and Kalakadu. The Maravas of Puli Thevar and his allies ravaged all of Tamil country south of Tirunelveli and Yusuf who had to deal with three enemies, appeared in dire straits.

An idiotic action by the Poligar of Wadagiri turned the tables. He had let his Maravas repeatedly plunder the territories of the Travancore Raja who was his neighbor too. The Maharaja of Travancore, angry at this policy, began to have second thoughts. Yusuf Khan exploited this by opening talks with the Raja of Travancore. This talk was to have fatal consequences. The Raja of Travancore agreed to side with Yusuf, if he left the Poligar confederacy. The Raja sent a large force of musketeers to join with Yusuf’s troops-altogether 20,000 men marched towards the fort of Wadagiri, and Polygar had to escape as he could not withstand them for more than a day.

The Polygar of Wadagiri took refuge with Puli Thevar at Nelkattumseval. Puli Thevar himself was worried as the most powerful Western Polygar-Wadagiri Polygar was finished. He learnt that the French had sent a letter to Mahfuz Khan which stated that soon the English would be finished and that Mahfuz would be crowned as Nawab after the present Nawab, an English puppet, was ousted. Thevar exploited this situation.

He sent a message to Travancore Raja about this letter and argued that since the French will win in the end, what would Travancore gain if they allied with the English, whose man was Yusuf? Thevar offered that if Travancore Raja side with them, he would let Raja have those parts of Tirunelveil of his own choice.

The Travancore Raja told Yusuf Khan of this communication of Puli Thevar. The Raja of Travancore argued that since Thevar had offered him so much, he will side with Yusuf only if Yusuf ceded the land between Cape Comorin and Kalakadu that Nawab had denied to Travancore. He also threatened Yusuf that if he supported Thevar that would mean the end of Nawab’s ambitions in country south of Tirunelveli-which indeed was a real threat.

The Dutch seizure of artillery sent by English meant for Yusuf Khan, opened the prospect of war with Dutch in Tuticorin (Toothukudi). Yusuf relented and ceded the territories demanded by the Raja and so Puli Thevar’s attempt to win this Raja ended in failure. If the Raja had allied with Thevar, the British conquest of South India might have been delayed by years and even decades. Thus Yusuf Khan was saved because by that time, Maravas across southern Tamil Nadu had flocked to Thevar’s fort to fight for their hero. It was beyond the capacity of Yusuf Khan to overpower so great a host alone, but with help from Travancore assured, he was confident. Soon, Travancore troops and Yusuf Khan’s units jointly captured the fort of Isvara Thevar, a vassal of Puli Thevar. Isvara Thevar and his men retreated to Nelkettumseval, but this victory had exhausted his ammunition and he was delayed in his next move. As they waited, a force of 6000 Maravas launched a surprise raid on the Travacore camp and killed several troops. But by time Yusuf Khan marched with his men, Marava force had retreated.

Siege of Vasdevanellur, 1759–1760

In December, 1759, Yusuf besieged fort of Vasudevanellur with his allied troops after he received a large stock of ammunition. This fort belonged to Puli Thevar and was his second strongest fort, located on top of a mountain range and was covered by a vast forest on all sides.

Puli Thevar kept 1000 men in the fort and spread out the rest of his force in the forest that surrounded the fort. These troops raided enemy camps, sniped and ambushed scattered units of Yusuf’s armies and they also disrupted his effort to build a massive construction for artillery batteries it took three weeks for Yusuf to complete the construction; relentless bombardment caused Yusuf to lose some of his heavy artillery and most of his ammunition. He had breached the wall of this mighty fort and he unwisely decided to engage his troops in a hand to hand combat with Thevar’s soldiers.

Puli Thevar was at this time not at Vasudevanellur, he was at his headquarters of Nelkattumseval. As both sides prepared for the final struggle for Vasudevanellur, Thevar collected 3000 of his ablest Maravas and led them in a night march from Nelkattumseval to Vasudevanellur.

Once he approached Vasudevanellur’s neighborhood, Thevar led his troops through the forest below the fort to avoid detection by enemy and sprang into a surprise attack on Yusuf Khan’s camp. Thevar’s troops devastated the enemy camp and Yusuf Khan threw a large force into the fray to tilt the balance. The Maravas, intoxicated by their success, fought with great ardour. In the meantime, those Maravas who had concealed themselves in forests and ambushed Yusuf Khan’s troops for the last 3–4 weeks came out of the woods and began to attack Yusuf Khan’s battery positions and the enemy infantry that was trying to move into the fort through the breach.

The Maravas were repeatedly beaten back by Yusuf’s men, but each time they returned to the attacks. These Maravas worked together with the garrison to check the enemy advance into the fort and they were successful. The Maravas then returned to the woods below the fort and lay in wait for a renewed enemy attack in night. But Yusuf Khan was nearly exhausted of his ammunition and he foresaw the catastrophe if he stood before the fort without ammunition.

The following day, Yusuf Khan and Travancore troops retreated and they split into two-Travancore troops went home while Yusuf and his men went to Tirunelveli. Yusuf Khan no longer had the ability to launch an offensive into Puli Thevar’s country so he stayed at Tirunelveli and posted his men at key points to limit Puli Thevar’s raids. For the time being his grand plan to crush this turbulent Polygar was shelved.

Thevar did not leave Yusuf Khan in peace. His Maravas ravaged Tirunelveli country so much that Yusuf Khan himself realised that he could not crush them by force so he bribed many of them to join his side. Yusuf soon found himself at war with Mysore and Dutch, which bought Thevar time. Yusuf Khan crushed a force of 3000 men sent by Kattabomman. Thevar learnt that the French were besieged in Pondicherry by the English and that Mahfuz Khan had gone over to Nawab, but his Maravas ravaged lands held by Yusuf Khan so much that he soon deployed the bulk of his force in front of Nelkettumseval in order to force the Maravas to abandon his lands.

He bought several pieces of heavy artillery but had no ammunition and sent a message to the British camp in Trichinopoly to send him ammunition. As he awaited, Puli Thevar launched a lightning raid on Yusuf’s camp and after killing and wounding several of Yusuf’s men retreated.

Finally after a long and ardous battle Puli Thevar was captured on his way to pilgrimage, and the rest as they say is the miracle of Mahadeva.

Puli Thevar’s desecendants are spread all over present day Tamil Nadu in the southern part. Most of them are located around the region called as nel kattan sevval (the place which doesn’t pay rice tribute) which before Puli Thevar’s war and after the Mohammaed Aley’s taking over Madura was known as Nel kattum sevval  (The place that pays the rice tribute)
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The Kunwars had since set up an alliance with the Shah kings of Nepal from the dynasty of the Hindu monarch Prithvi Narayan Shah and held several important positions under the dynasty, helping to consolidate the Shah rule over Nepal.

While having many a great exploits fighting for the Hindu Gorkhali army of Nepal, Balbhadra Kunwar moment of glory lay in the part he played in the Gorkha-Anglo wars.

It was in the month of October 1814 that the soldiers of the British East India Army advanced towards the Hindu kingdom of Nepal. Being lead by Rollo Gillespie the major General, a horde of 3500 soldiers , armed with latest weapons and cannons, this force advanced to occupy the territories between the Ganga and Yamuna  rivers in Garwal and Kumaon.  Realizing that he could not defend the non-combatants against this assault in the valley of Dehradun the brave Gorkha General decided to take them to Nalapani fort (located due North East from Deradun).

A night before the declaration of war, the British General Gillespie had sent a letter to Balbhadra asking him to surrender and he would be made the Governor of Dehradun. In reply he tore the letter and said,

“ I shall meet your General in the battlefield “.

It was at this time that Balbadra supported by only 600 troops (including women, the young and elderly) and fight these foreign mercenaries who had come to occupy his Hindu lands.

The Hindu troops used basic rifles, stones and arrows to fight the British hordes. This was so much in contrast to the modern rifles and 11 cannons with which the British were armed.  What followed was a fierce battle between the brave Hindu Gorkha troops and the British mercenaries for the next one month.

After realizing that military might would not make these brave Hindu surrender the cowardly British decided to cut off the only supply of water to the fort at Nalpani. This causes immense trouble to the Hindus inside the vicinity of fort, especially due to the presence of small children, women and the elderly. The walls of the fort had also been battered by the fodder of the British cannons.

Many brave Hindus had lost their lives fighting for the sake of their lands. Therefore to prevent any further harm to the defenceless Babhadra Kunwar decided to take the inhabitants, combatants and non-combatants alike, to the safety Dwarka on the night of Nov 16 1814. The Brtish continued to launch attacks on them, knowing fully well that they had non-combacts with them. The proud Hindus continued to respond to these kind while couriering the defenseless and weak to safety.

Thereafter a message was sent to the British

“We had handed over to you your deed and injured soldiers on your request. We now request you to hand over our injured soldiers to us”

a request declined by the British although they claimed that they were taking care of POWs.

Seeing the condition of his people, Balbhadra decided to ask Kathmandu for more troops as reinforcement to fight the foreigners. Sadly as the Shah’s were still consolidating the Hindu Kingdom, these troops could not be provided on time and so the Commander decided to move on to Gopichand hill fort from Dwara on Nov 18, 1814.

The Hindus spent the night at Gopichand hills while the British kept on bombarding them with their cannon fire. Meanwhile his trusted lieutenant Sardar Ripumardan Thapa (sardar standing for a leader and not a Sikh should any misunderstanding ensue) sustained an injury in his right arm from an enemy shell. Sadly he couldn’t continue the ascend uphill and had to stop while the rest of the Hindus continued to climb uphill to safety.

The next day on Nov 19,1814, men sent by Balabhadra carried Ripumardana to Chamuwa for treatment. Kaji Ranadipa Simha Basnyat,  Kaji Rewanta Kunwar and Subedar Dalajit Kanwar also had arrived by this time for the assistance of Gurkhas, even though they were killed by enemy fire on the very next day.

Defiant to the last of his resources ultimately after four days of thirst, hunger, weariness and enduring severe wounds the Hindu lion Balbhadra emerged out of the camp with khurkris drawn in both his mace like hands (along with the rest of 70 surviving Hindus) and roared to the British Merceneries –“ You could have never won this battle but now I myself voluntarily abandon this fort. There is nothing inside the fort other than corpses of the children and women” Saying thus, he and his Gurkhas left for the hills.

Finally a peace treaty was signed between the British East India Company and His Royal Highness Maharaja Dhiraj Girvan Vikram Shah and  the British East India Company, known as Sugauli Treaty. While the Hindu Gurkhas might not have won this war, they still came out as victors. Victors of the spirit of Sanatana Dharma, the fire that ignites the hearts of countless Hindu men and women since ages which tells them to never give up not even in the face of extreme opposition. So enamored were the British by the bravery of brave Hindu Gurkhas that one of their poets, John Ship,  dedicated the following lines to them,

“I never saw more steadinesses Or bravery exhibited in my life. Run they would not and of death They seemed to have no fear Though their comrades were falling Thick around them, as bold For we were so near to know That every shot of ours told’.”

Bhalbhadra Kunwar did not loose his life in the Gurkha-Anglo war, he procceded to Lahore, then capital of Punjab to join ranks with the new Lahore regiment formed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Balbhadra Kunwar in keeping with his brave past was made the General of this new regiment, which consisted of entirely Hindu Gorkhali troops. The word Gorkhali was strictly reserved for those Hindus who served under the Hindu kings, others who had served the Muhammadan warlords were known as “Munglane” and were seen as lowly and unclean.

It was during the Sikh-Afghan war, that the brave General finally met his heroic end while fighting the afghans tribals during a bout of heavy artillery fire. It is said that he was the last man in his regiment to fall and kept fighting to his end. Thus came a comma to the great and heroic life of a great Hindu warrior (I saw comma because in Sanatana Dharma there is no fullstop). As a tribute to his gallantry the British erected a war memorial at Nalapani, where the following words bear inscribed bear testament to his life

“as a tribute of respect for our gallant adversary Balbudder Commander of the fort and his brave Gorkhas who were afterwards while in the service of Ranjit Singh shot down in their ranks to the last man by the Afghan artillery.”

Later Capt. Balbhadra Kunwar´s descendants and family members were to establish the Rana dynasty in the middle of the 1800´s led by Jung Bahador Kunwar Rana.

Today the decendants of Balbhadra live mainly in Nepal (kathmandu and pokhara, other cities too) but are also found Internationaly in the India, USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, U.A.E among other places.

By Amit

(10873)

Vivekananda himself symbolised an irony of that system of education which had been deliberately designed to demolish Hinduism and promote Christianity.  He was himself a product of that very education, but he turned against Christianity and in defence of Hinduism the knowledge and intellectual discipline which he had acquired as a student in a missionary college.

The renewal of East India Company’s Charter in 1813 had opened the Company’s dominions to Christian missionaries.  It had also advised “introduction of useful knowledge and religious and moral improvement.” A controversy had been going on ever since regarding the system of education suitable for India.  The Orientalists among the British rulers advocated retention of the traditional Indian system.  They were afraid that imparting of Western knowledge to natives would encourage them to claim equality with white men and demand democratisation of the administration.  The Anglicists, on the other hand, were convinced that knowledge of Western literature, philosophy and science would wean Hindus away from their “ancestral superstitions” and draw them closer to the religion and culture of the ruling race.

Christian missionaries were, by and large, with the Anglicists.  One of them had written in 1822 that, through Western education, Hindus “now engaged in the degrading and polluting worship of idols shall be brought to the knowledge of true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.” Missionaries felt immensely strengthened when Alexander Duff, an ardent advocate of Western education, reached Calcutta in 1830.

Alexander Duff was convinced that “of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen men, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous and that India was “the chief seat of Satan’s earthly dominion.”

He studied for some time the effect which Western education was having on Hindu young men attending the Hindu College and similar institutions which had come up in Calcutta and elsewhere in Bengal since more than a decade before his arrival.  He came to the definite conclusion that Western education would make the Hindus “perfect unbelievers in their own system” and “perfect believers in Christianity.” In an address delivered in 1835 to a General Church Assembly he proclaimed that knowledge of Western literature and science would “demolish the huge and hideous fabric of Hinduism” brick by brick till “the whole will be found to have crumbled into fragments.”

A Committee of Public Instruction had been set up by the Government for recommending a suitable system of education.  Alexander Duff had been made a member of the Committee in 1834.  Next year, T. B. Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council, was appointed to preside over the Committee.  He wrote a Minute on February 2, 1835, advocating Western education.  There was a tie between the Anglicists and the Orientalists when the Minute came before the Committee on March 7. Macaulay used his casting vote and forced a decision.  The Western system of education was adopted.  In a letter written to his father in 1836, Macaulay predicated,

“It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years” hence.

The missionaries were trying hard to turn the dream into a reality.  “And in what country,” Louis Rousslet, a French traveller to India, wrote in 1876,

“could such a spectacle be witnessed as that which met my eyes that day in this square of Benares?

There, at ten paces from all that the Hindoo holds to be most sacred in religion, between the Source of wisdom and the idol of Siva, a Protestant missionary had taken his stand beneath a tree.Mounted on a chair, he was preaching in the Hindostani language, on the Christian religion and the errors of paganism.

I heard his shrill voice, issuing from the depths of a formidable shirt-collar, eject these words at the crowd, which respectfully and attentively surrounded him You are idolaters; that block of stone which you worship has been taken from a quarry, it is no better than the stone of my house.  The reproaches called forth no murmur; the missionary was listened to immovably, but his dissertation was attended to, for every now and then one of the audience would put a question, to which the brave apostle replied as best as he could.

Perhaps we should be disposed to admire the courage of the missionary if the well-known toleration of the Hindoos did not defraud him of all his merit; and it is this tolerance that most disheartens the missionary one of whom said to me – our labours are in vain; you can never convert a man who has sufficient conviction in his own religion to listen, without moving a muscle, to all the attacks you can make against it.”

The fond hope that Hinduism will die out before long was expressed by Richard Temple before a Christian audience in England in 1883.  “India is like a mighty bastion,” he wrote, “which is being battered by heavy artillery.  We have given blow after blow, and thud after thud, and the effect is not at first very remarkable; but at last with a crash the mighty structure will come toppling down, and it is our hope that some day the heathen religions of India will in like manner succumb.”

At the same time, he felt sure that Christianity had a very bright future in India.

“But we are not chasing a shadow,” he continued, “we are not rolling a Sisyphean stone, we are not ascending an inaccessible hill; or, if we are going up hill, it is that sort of ascent which soon leads to a summit, from which we shall survey the promised land. And when we reach the top what prospect shall we see? We shall see churches in India raising up their spires towards heaven, Christian villages extending over whole tracts of country, churches crowded with dusky congregations and dusky communicants at the altar tables.

We shall hear the native girls singing hymns in the vernacular, and see boys trooping to school or studying for the universities under missionary auspices.  Those things, and many others, I have seen, and would to God I could fix them on the minds of my audience as they are fixed upon my own.”

Vivekananda shattered the hope and the dream in the next decade.

Narendranath Datta, who was to become Swami Vivekananda, was born in 1863, the year when Alexander Duff left India well satisfied that Hinduism was on its way out and Christianity on its way in, at least in Bengal.  Macaulay’s prediction appeared to be coming true as there had been a spate of conversions to Christianity.

In 1832 Alexander Duff had converted Krishnamohan Banerji, a student of the Hindu College.  Banerji, in turn, converted fifty-nine young men in the next few years.  He became a minister of the Christ Church and was “instrumental in converting several hundred Hindus in Krishnanagar in 1839.” The other important converts made by Duff were K. C. Banerji and M. L. Basak in 1839 and Lal Behari De and Madhusudan Dutta in 1843.

Leaders of the Brahmo Samaj were perturbed and tried to arrest the trend.  A meeting held in Calcutta in May 1845 and attended by a thousand Hindus, gave a call that Hindus should not send their boys to missionary schools and colleges.  Some funds were collected for promoting Hindu educational and humanitarian institutions.  But their efforts did not make much headway.

The missionaries commanded much larger resources and official patronage.  There was a craze for Western education which was thought best when imparted in missionary institutions.  Moreover, the coming of Keshub Chunder Sen to the top in the Brahmo Samaj gave a further blow to Hinduism.  He was infatuated with Jesus and the Bible and made hysterical outbursts in praise of both.

The only resolute defender of Hinduism in this intellectually hostile atmosphere was Bankim Chandra Chatterji.  He was well-versed in Western literature and philosophy and his knowledge of Hindu Shastras and history was deep as well as discerning.  He had come to the definite conclusion that Hindus had nothing to learn from Christianity.  For him, Jesus was “an incomplete man”, the Christian God “a despot” and the Christian doctrine of everlasting punishment “devilish”.  He repudiated the missionary accusation that Hinduism was responsible for corruptions that had crept into Hindu society in the course of history.  “If the principles of Christianity,” he wrote, “are not responsible for the slaughter of the crusades, the butcheries of Alva, the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the flames of the Inquisition… If the principles of Christianity are not responsible for the civil disabilities of Roman Catholics and Jews which till recently disgraced the English Statute Book, I do not understand how the principles of Hinduism are to be held responsible for the civil disabilities of the sudras under the Brahmanic regime.

The critics of Hinduism have one measure for their own religion and another for Hinduism.” For him, Sri Krishna was the highest ideal, both human and divine.  His novels and essays were creating a consciousness of pride in the Hindu heritage in that large section of Hindu society which had not yet passed under the spell of Jesus.

Narendranath was a student in Alexander Duffs General Assembly’s Institution which later on became the Scottish Church College.  He had made a wide study of Western literature, history and philosophy, had joined the Brahmo Samaj and come to share Keshub Chunder Sen’s admiration for Jesus.

But a turning point came in his life when he met Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in November 1880.  For the first time, he was face to face with a powerful expression of Hindu spirituality and that, too, in a simple man who had not been even to a primary school.  His travels all over India after Sri Ramakrishna’s death gave him further glimpses of how Hindu spirituality had percolated effortlessly to the lowest levels of Hindu society.  He was thus in a position to process Christianity from the vantage point of a new vision.  In the end, he frustrated Alexanders Duff’s hope and falsified Macaulay’s and Temple’s prediction.

Sri Ramakrishna had never heard of Jesus till Jesus was thrust under his nose by those disciples who had come to him from the fold of Keshub Chunder Sen. Mahendra Nath Gupta, whose record of the talks of Sri Ramakrishna was to become famous as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna had an infantile fascination for Jesus and never missed an opportunity to compare the sayings and doings of Jesus with those of the Paramahamsa.

But to the last, Jesus remained for Sri Ramakrishna only a figure which people belonging to a foreign religion worshipped as God.  He did not have even a remote knowledge of the dogmas of Christianity.  The only dogma, that of the original sin, which was presented to him by some disciples, he repudiated with repugnance.  “Once someone gave me,” he said on October 27, 1882, “a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me.  It talked about nothing but sin.” Turning to Keshub Chunder Sen, who was present, he continued, “Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner…

Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?” Thus he knocked the bottom out of Christianity.  Without sin, there was no need for the atoning death of a historical saviour.

Vivekananda carried forward the same idea.  “The greatest error,” he said, “is to call a man a weak and miserable sinner.  Every time a person thinks in this mistaken manner, he rivets one more link in the chain of avidyA that binds him, adds one more layer to the “self-hypnotism” that lies heavy over his mind.” He compared the Hindu and Christian concepts of the soul.  “One of the chief distinctions,” he said, “between the Vedic and the Christian religion is that the Christian religion teaches that each human soul had its beginning at its birth into this world, whereas the Vedic religion asserts that the spirit of man is an emanation of the Eternal Being and has no more a beginning than God Himself.” He hailed humans as Children of Immortal Bliss – amritasya putrAH – in the language of the Upanishads.  “Ye are the children of God,” he proclaimed while addressing the Parliament of Religions, “the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings.  Ye divinities on earth – sinners!  It is a sin to call man so; it is a standing libel on human nature.  Come up, lions! and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal.”

Vivekananda repudiated the idea of vicarious saving also.  He proclaimed the Hindu doctrine that everyone has to work out his own salvation.  “The Christians believe,” he said, “that Jesus Christ died to save man.  With you it is belief in a doctrine, and this belief constitutes your salvation.  With us doctrine has nothing whatever to do with salvation. 

Each one may believe in whatever doctrine he likes; or in no doctrine.  What difference does it make to you whether Jesus Christ lived at a certain time or not?  What has it to do with you that Moses saw God in the burning bush?  The fact that Moses saw God in the burning bush does not constitute your seeing him, does it?… Records of great spiritual men in the past do us no good whatever except that they urge us onward to do the same, to experience religion ourselves.  Whatever Christ or Moses or anybody else did, does not help us in the least, except to urge us on.”

He was aware that the historicity of Christ had become highly controversial among scholars of the subject.  “There is a great dispute,” he wrote, “as to whether there ever was born a man with the name of Jesus.  Of the four books comprising the New Testament, the Book of St. John has been rejected by some as spurious.  As to the remaining three, the verdict is that they have been copied from ancient books; and that, too, long after the date ascribed to Jesus Christ.

Moreover, about the time that Jesus is believed to have been born, among the Jews themselves there were born two historians, Josephus and Philo.  They have mentioned even petty sects among the Jews but not made the least reference to Jesus or the Christians or that the Roman judge sentenced him to death on the cross. Josephus’ book had a single line about it, which has now been proved to be an interpolation. The Romans used to rule over the Jews at that time, and the Greeks taught them all arts and Sciences.

They have all written a good many things about the Jews but made no mention of either Jesus or the Christians.” He also knew that doubts had been raised whether Jesus had himself said what was attributed to him in the gospels. “Another difficulty,” he continued, “is that the sayings, precepts, or doctrines which the New Testament preaches were already in existence among the Jews before the Christian era, having come from different quarters, and were being preached by Rabbis like Hillel and others.”

The miracles of Christ also failed to impress Vivekananda. In fact, they repelled him strongly. “What were the great powers of Christ,” he asked, “in miracles and healing, in one of his characters? They were low, vulgar things because he was among vulgar beings… Any fool could do those things. Fools heal others, devils can heal others. I have seen horrible demoniacal men do wonderful miracles. They seem to manufacture fruits out of the earth. I have known fools and diabolical men tell the past, present and future. I have seen fools heal at a glance, by the will, the most horrible diseases. These are powers, truly, but often demoniacal powers.” And he was not at all interested in the historical Jesus. “One gets sick at heart,” he said, “at the different accounts of the life of the Christ that Western people give. One would make him a great politician; another, perhaps, would make of him a great military general, another a great patriotic Jew; and so on.”

What interested him was Jesus the spiritual teacher. He saw several points of strength in the life and teachings of Jesus, particularly the purity of heart and renunciation of worldly pursuits. “If you want to be Christian,” he said, “it is not necessary to know whether Christ was born in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or just the exact date on which he pronounced the Sermon on the Mount; you only require to feel the Sermon on the Mount. It is not necessary to read 2000 words on when it was delivered. All that is for the enjoyment of the learned. Let them have it; say amen to that. Let us eat the mango.”

 Christians were welcome to seek salvation through Christ. According to Hinduism, everyone has the right to choose his own ishTadeva. “It is absolutely necessary,” he said, “to worship God as man, and blessed are those races which have such a ‘God-man’ in Christ; therefore, cling close to Christ; never give up Christ.

That is the natural way to see God in man. All our ideas of God are concentrated there.” Christians go wrong only when they insist that Christ is the only saviour. “The great limitation Christians have,” he continued, “is that they do not heed other manifestations of God besides Christ.

He was a manifestation of God; so was Buddha, so were some others, and there will be hundreds of others. Do not limit God anywhere.”Delivering a lecture on ‘Christ, the Messenger’, he quoted Sri Krishna, “Wherever thou findest a great soul of immense power and purity struggling to raise humanity, know that he is born of My splendour, that I am working there through him.” And he advised the Christians, “Let us, therefore, find God not only in Jesus of Nazareth but in all the great ones that have preceded him, in all that came after him, and all that are yet to come. Our worship is unbounded. They are all manifestations of the same infinite God.”

Yet it was Christ that Vivekananda found missing from Christianity. He wondered which Church, if any, represented Christ. All churches were equally intolerant, each threatening to kill those who did not believe as it did. The person of Christ rather than his teaching had become more important for Christianity. He had been turned into the “only begotten son of God.”Christian baptism remained external and did not touch the inner man. It aimed at instilling some mental beliefs and not at transforming human behaviour.

Most men remained the same after baptism as they were before it. What was worse, the mere sprinkling of water over them and muttering of formulas by a priest made them believe that they were better than other people. He quoted the Kenopanishad in this context

: “Ever steeped in the darkness of ignorance, yet considering themselves wise and learned, the fools go round and round, staggering to and fro like the blind led by the blind.”

The Eucharist was nothing more than the survival of a savage custom.

“They sometimes killed their great chiefs,” said Vivekananda, “and ate their flesh in order to obtain in themselves the qualities which made their leaders great.” Human sacrifice was a Jewish idea which was borrowed by Christianity “in the form of atonement.” This seeking for a “scapegoat” had made Christianity “develop a spirit of persecution and bloodshed.”

Christian missionaries were attacking the Puranas for containing passages which they considered somewhat obscene. Vivekananda had studied the Bible and knew that it contained a lot which was downright pornography. But he had his own method of exposing the Bible. “The Chinese,” he wrote, “are the disciples of Confucius, are the disciples of Buddha, and their morality is quite strict and refined. Obscene language, obscene books, pictures, any conduct the least obscene – and the offender is punished then and there.

The Christian missionaries translated the Bible into Chinese tongue. Now in the Bible there are some passages so obscene as to put to shame some of the Puranas of the Hindus. Reading those indecorous passages, the Chinamen were so exasperated against Christianity that they made a point of never allowing the Bible to be circulated in their country… The simpleminded Chinese were disgusted, and raised a cry, saying: Oh, horror! This religion has come to us to ruin our young boys, by giving them this Bible to read… This is why the Chinese are very indignant with Christianity. Otherwise the Chinese are very tolerant towards other religions. I hear that the missionaries have printed an edition, leaving out the objectionable parts; but this step has made the Chinese more suspicious than before.”

 The history of Christianity in Europe and elsewhere had simply horrified Vivekananda, as it does any person with any moral sensibility. Besides being blood-soaked, Christianity has been inimical to all free enquiry. “The ancient Greeks,” wrote Vivekananda, “who were the first teachers of European civilisation attained the zenith of their culture long before the Christians.

Ever since they became Christians, all their learning and culture was extinguished.” When he was passing by Egypt on his way to Europe, a missionary mentioned to him the miracles which, according to the Bible, Moses had performed in that country. But Vivekananda had read history. He knew the record of Christianity in Egypt.

“Here was the city of Alexandria,” he said, “famous all over the world for its university, its library, and its literati – that Alexandria which, falling into the hands of illiterate, bigoted and vulgar Christians suffered destruction, with its library burnt to ashes and learning stamped out. Finally, the Christians killed the lady savant, Hypatia, subjected her dead body to all sorts of abominable insult, and dragged it through the streets, till every bit of flesh was removed from her bones.”

Christianity had spread with the help of the sword since the days of Constantine and tried to suppress science and philosophy. “What support,” asked Vivekananda,

“has Christianity ever lent to the spread of civilisation, either spiritual or secular? What reward did the Christian religion offer to the European Pandit who sought to prove for the first time that the Earth is a revolving planet? What scientist has ever been hailed with approval and enthusiasm by the Christian Church?”

Coming to modem times, Vivekananda found Christianity very vindictive: “The great thinkers of Europe Voltaire, Darwin, Buchner, Flammarion, Victor Hugo and a host of others like him – are in the present time denounced by Christianity and are victims of vituperative tongues of its orthodox community.”

Christian missionaries in India were crediting to Christianity the rise and progress of modern Europe. This was a great falsehood. “Whatever heights of progress Europe has attained,” continued Vivekananda, “every one of them has been gained by its revolt against Christianity – by its rising against the Gospel. If Christianity had its old paramount sway in Europe today, it would have lighted the fire of the Inquisition against such modern scientists as Pasteur and Koch, and burnt Darwin and others of his school at the stake.

 In modern Europe Christianity and civilization are two different things. Civilization has now girded up her loins to destroy her old enemy, Christianity, to overthrow the clergy and to wring educational and charitable institutions from their hands. But for the ignorance-ridden rustic masses, Christianity would never have been able for a moment to support its present despised existence, and would have been pulled out by its roots; for the urban poor are, even now, enemies of the Christian Church!”

Christian missionaries were citing the prosperity of the modern West as an example of the superiority of Christianity. Much of that prosperity, however, was derived from the plunder of other peoples. “We who have come from the East,” he said in an interview to a U.S. newspaper on September 29, 1893, “have sat here day after day and have been told to accept Christianity because Christian nations are the most prosperous. We look about us and see England, the most prosperous Christian nation in the world, with her foot on the neck of 250,000,000 Asiatics.

We look back into history and see that the prosperity of Christian Europe began with Spain. Spain’s prosperity began with the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins its prosperity by cutting the throats of its fellow men. At such a price the Hindu will not have prosperity. I have sat here and heard the height of intolerance. I have heard the creed of Moslems applauded, when the Moslem sword is carrying destruction into India. Blood and sword are not for the Hindu, whose religion is based on the laws of love.”

The newspaper described it as a “savage attack on Christian nations.” Vivekananda had a lot to say on Western colonialism and the massacre of natives in America, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. But that is not the subject at present.

What really amazed him was the utter lack of logic in Christian propaganda. “On metaphysical lines,” he wrote on his return to India in 1897, “no nation on earth can hold a candle to the Hindus; and curiously all the fellows that come over here from Christian lands have that one antiquated foolishness of an argument that because the Christians are powerful and rich and Hindus are not, so Christianity must be better than Hinduism. To which the Hindus very aptly retort that, that is the very reason why Hinduism is a religion and Christianity is not; because in this beastly world, it is blackguardism and that alone which prospers, virtue always suffers.”

Hindus have nothing to gain from Christianity as it is only a system of superstitions. Hindus should not get frightened when the missionaries threaten them with hell; in fact, hell is better than the company of a Christian missionary. “There came a Christian to me once,” recalled Vivekananda, “and said, ‘You are a terrible sinner.’ I said, ‘Yes, I am. Go on.’ He was a Christian missionary.

That man would not give me any rest. When I see him I fly. He said, ‘I have very good things for you. You are a sinner and you will go to hell.’ I said, ‘Very good, what else?’ I asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I am going to heaven,’ he answered. I said, ‘I will go to hell.’ “That day he gave me up.” If Christ could help people become good, why has he failed in the Christian countries where he has been worshipped for so long? “Here comes a Christian man,” continued Vivekananda, “and he says, ‘You are all doomed; but if you believe in this doctrine, Christ will help you out.’ If this were true – but of course it is nothing but superstition – there would be no wickedness in Christian countries. Let us believe in it – belief costs nothing – but why is there no result? If I ask, ‘Why is it that there are so many wicked people?’ They say, ‘We have to work more.’ Trust in God but keep your power dry!”

Criticism of Christianity, however, was not the primary task which Vivekananda had set for himself. He was first and foremost an exponent of Hinduism. He had to speak out about Christianity because the missionaries forced it upon him by their unceasing sallies against Hinduism. This is not the occasion even for a summary of his voluminous writings and speeches on various aspects of the subject he loved above all. We shall only touch a few points which he upheld against missionary attack.

The missionaries were highly critical of the Vedas which Hindus have always held in the highest esteem. Vivekananda upheld the Vedas as depositories of divine wisdom. For him, scriptures like the Bible and the Quran were paurusheya, that is, revelations accessible only to particular persons whose experience could not be verified by other people. The Vedas, on the other hand, were apaurusheya, that is, statements of spiritual truths which any seeker could verify by spiritual practice. “Although we find,” he said, “many names, and many speakers, and many teachers in the Upanishads, not one of them stands as an authority of the Upanishads, not one verse is based upon the life of any one of them.

These are simple figures like shadows moving in the background, unfelt, unseen, unrealised, but the real force is in the marvellous, the brilliant, the effulgent texts of the Upanishads, perfectly impersonal. If twenty Yajnavalkyas came and lived and died, it does not matter; the texts are there. And yet it is against no personality: it is broad and expansive enough to embrace all the personalities that the world has yet produced, and all that are yet to come. It has nothing to say against the worship of persons, or Avataras, or sages.

On the other hand, it is always upholding it. At the same time, it is perfectly impersonal.”Rather than processing the Vedas in terms of the Bible, as the Brahmos had started doing, the Bible should be weighed on the Vedic scale and prove its worth. “So far as the Bible,” he observed, “and the scriptures of other nations agree with the Vedas, they are perfectly good, but when they do not agree, they are no more to be accepted.”

On another occasion he said, “It is in the Vedas that we have to study our religion. With the exception of the Vedas every book must change. The authority of the Vedas is for all time to come; the authority of every one of our other books is for the time being. For instance, one Smriti is powerful for one age, another for another age.”

Brahmanas were the next target of missionary attack. Vivekananda stood by these custodians of Hinduism. “The ideal man of our ancestors,” he said, “was the Brahmin. In all our books stands out prominently this ideal of the Brahmin. In Europe there is my Lord the Cardinal, who is struggling hard and spending thousands of pounds to prove the nobility of his ancestors and he will not be satisfied until he has traced his ancestry to some dreadful tyrant who lived on a hill and watched the people passing by, and whenever he had the opportunity, sprang out and robbed them...

In India, on the other hand, the greatest princes seek to trace their descent to .some ancient sage who dressed in a bit of loin cloth, lived in a forest, eating roots and studying the Vedas… You are of the high caste when you can trace your ancestry to a Rishi, and not otherwise… Our ideal is the Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation.”

Another practice of Hinduism which the missionaries never missed pillorying was idolatry. “It has become a trite saying,” said Vivekananda, “that idolatry is wrong and every man swallows it without questioning. I once thought so, and to pay the penalty of that I had to learn my lesson sitting at the feet of a man who realised everything through idols. I allude to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. If such Ramakrishna Paramahamsas are produced by idol-worship, what will you have – the reformer’s creed or any number of idols? I want an answer.

Take a thousand idols more if you can produce Ramakrishna Paramahamsas through idol-worship, and may God speed you! Produce such noble natures by any means you can. Yet idolatry is condemned! Why? Nobody knows. Because some hundreds of years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it? That is, he happened to condemn everybody else’s idols except his own.

If God is represented in any beautiful form or any symbolic form, said the Jew, it is awfully bad; it is sin. But if He is represented in the form of a chest, with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over it, it is the holy of holies. If God comes in the form of a dove, it is holy. But if He comes in the form of a cow, it is heathen superstition; condemn it! That is how the world goes.

That is why the poet says, ‘what fools we mortals be!’… Boys, moustached babies, who never went out of Madras, standing up and wanting to dictate laws to three hundred millions of people who have thousands of traditions at their back!”

 Lastly, he defended the caste system, the bete noire of all missionaries and reformers inspired by them. “Caste is a very good thing,” he said. “Caste is the plan we want to follow… There is no country in the world without caste. In India, from caste we reach the point where there is no caste. Caste is based throughout on that principle. The plan in India is to make everybody a Brahmin, the Brahmin being the ideal of humanity. If you read the history of India you will find that attempts have always been made to raise the lower classes. Many are the classes that have been raised. Many more will follow till the whole will become Brahmin. That is the plan.

 We have to raise them without bringing down anybody… Indian caste is better than the caste which prevails in Europe or America. I do not say it is absolutely good. Where would you be if there were no caste? Where would be your learning and other things, if there were no caste? There would be nothing left for Europeans to study if caste had never existed. The Mohammedans would have smashed everything to pieces.” Caste was never a stationary institution. “Caste is continually changing,” said Vivekananda, “rituals are continually changing. it is the substance, the principle that does not change… Caste should not go; but should only he readjusted occasionally. Within the old structure is to be found life enough for the building of two hundred thousand new ones. It is sheer nonsense to desire the abolition of caste. The new method is – evolution of the old.”

The great strength of Hinduism is that it does not lay down one dogma for everybody as is the case with Christianity and Islam. “The fault with all religions like Christianity,” said Vivekananda, “is that they have one set of rules for all. But Hindu religion is suited to all grades of religious aspiration and progress. It contains all the ideas in their perfect form.” A universality which does not preserve individuality is false. “Individuality in universality,” he continued, “is the plan of creation...

Man is individual and at the same time .universal. It is while raising the individual that we realise even our national and universal nature.” It is because of this spirit of universality that Hinduism has never been a persecuting religion: “You know that the Hindu religion never persecutes. It is the land where all sects may live in peace and unity. The Mohammedans brought murder and slaughter in their train, but until their arrival peace prevailed.”

The hour had come for Hinduism to carry its message abroad once more: “India was once a great missionary power. Hundreds of years before England was converted to Christianity, Buddha sent out missionaries to convert the world of Asia to his doctrine.” Vivekananda had himself given the lead. “I have planted the seed,” he wrote from America to the Raja of Khetri, “in this country; it is already a plant, and I expect it to be a tree very soon. The more the Christian priests oppose me, the more I am determined to leave a permanent mark on their country.”

It was natural that Christian missionaries should notice Vivekananda the moment he spoke at the Parliament of Religions. They had never heard of the man before. They went into action in both the U.S.A. and India and were joined by some Brahmos of Keshub’s school.

“They joined,” reported Vivekananda in a speech at Madras soon after his return, “the other opposition – the Christian missionaries. There is not one black lie imaginable that these latter did not invent against me. They blackened my character from city to city, poor and friendless though I was in a foreign country. They tried to oust me from every house and make every man who became my friend my enemy. They tried to starve me out.”

At the same time he hit out at the Brahmo leaders who saw salvation of India through Christianity. “I am sorry to say,” added Vivekananda, “that one of my own countrymen took part against me in this. He is the leader of a reform party in India. This gentleman is declaring every day, ‘Christ has come to India.’ Is this the way Christ is to come to India?… Is that the lesson that he had learnt after sitting twenty years at the feet of Christ? Our great reformers declare that Christianity and Christian power are going to uplift the Indian people. Is that the way to do it? Surely, if that gentleman is an illustration, it does not look very hopeful.”

J. Murray Mitchell who was working as a missionary in India at that time reacted adversely to reports about Vivekananda’s popularity in the U.S.A. “We fear men from the East,” he wrote, “mistook politeness with which they were received as guests for sympathy with their opinions. Very singular at all events, have been the accounts that have been transmitted to Asia regarding the effect of their exposition of the Oriental creeds.

They had carried the war into the enemy’s country, and were everywhere victorious.” He selected P. C. Mozumdar as the real representative of “advanced and intelligent Hindus” at the Parliament of Religions. Mozumdar had said, “Representatives of all religions, may all your religions merge in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, so that Christ’s prophecy may be fulfilled and mankind become one Kingdom under God as our Father.” Mr. Mitchell regretted that Mozumdar did not draw the applause he deserved because of his admiration for Christianity. “But Mr. Protap Chunder Mozumdar,” he said, “seems to have made much less impression than a young man who has assumed the honorofic title of Swami a step which Mr. [Keshub Chunder] Sen never ventured to take. Mr. Mozumdar appeared in plain Western dress, the Swami stood arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow. The ladies clustered around him in admiration.”

What had hurt Mr. Mitchell the most was Vivekananda’s denunciation of the doctrine of sin. “We need not dwell,” he mourned, “on the Swami’s teaching. Let one specimen suffice.” He quoted verbatim what Vivekananda had said when he hailed people at the Parliament as “sharers of bliss” and “divinities on earth.” Vivekananda had hit Christianity in its solar plexus. How could Christianity thrive without selling sin? “We are truly sorry for the man,” concluded Mr. Mitchell, “who can thus trifle with his hearers with deeply solemn questions.”

Vivekananda was rather mild in his criticism of missionaries when he spoke in the Parliament of Religions on September 29, 1893. “You Christians, who are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the soul of the heathen why do you not try to save their bodies from starvation?… You erect Churches all through India but-the crying evil in the East is not religion – they have religion enough – but it is bread that the suffering millions of burning India cry out for with parched throats… It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics.”

He knew that missionaries were not preaching purely out of religious zeal; they had chosen the mission as a career and were paid for it. “In India,” he said, “a priest who preached for money would lose caste and be spat upon by the people.”He spoke in the same Vein when he addressed the Parliament of Religions on October 11, 1893. “Christian missionaries,” he said, “come to offer life but only on condition that the Hindus became Christians, abandoning the faith of their fathers and forefathers. Is it right?… If you wish to illustrate the meaning of ‘brotherhood’, treat Hindus more kindly even though he be a Hindu and is faithful to his religion. Send missionaries to teach them how better to earn a piece of bread, and not teach them metaphysical nonsense.”

But when he noticed that even his mild comments on missionary activities were received with great resentment in Christian circles, his tone became sharp. The Detroit Free Press dated February 21, 1894 reported a lecture which he had delivered on ‘Hindus and Christians’. Coming to Christian missionaries he said, “You train and educate and pay men to do what? To come over to my country to curse and abuse all my forefathers, my religion, and everything.

 They walk near a temple and say, ‘You idolators, you will go to hell.’ But they dare not do that to the Mohammedans of India; the sword would be out. But the Hindu is too mild… And then you who train men to abuse and criticise, if I just touch you with the least bit of criticism, with the kindest purpose, you shrink and cry: ‘Don’t touch us; we are Americans. We criticise all the people in the world, curse them and abuse them, say anything, but do not touch us, we are sensitive plants?’…  And whenever your ministers criticise us let them remember this:

If all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us. And what for? Did we ever send one missionary to convert anybody in the world? We say to you: ‘Welcome to your religion, but allow me to have mine?’… With all your brags and boastings, where has Christianity succeeded without the sword? Show me one place in the whole world. One I say, throughout the history of the Christian religion – one; I do not want two. I know how your forefathers were converted. They had to be converted or killed; that was all. What can you do better than Mohammedanism, with all your bragging?”

As he heard the malicious propaganda against Hinduism which missionaries were mounting in America and saw ‘their methods of raising money’, he hit them hard. “What is meant,” he asked, “by those pictures in the school-books for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black but the baby is painted white to arouse more sympathy, and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she becomes a ghost and torments the husband’s enemy?

What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country, where one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta. I have heard one gentleman preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a pond full of the bones of little children. What have the Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus vile, and ‘wretches’ and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindu especially, so that from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the missions.”

Vivekananda warned the missionaries about the effect which their propaganda was having on the moral and mental health of people who listened to them. “If not for the sake of truth,” he said, “for the sake of the morality of their own children, the Christian missionaries ought not to allow such things going on. Is it any wonder that such children grow up to be ruthless and cruel men and women?… A servant-girl in the employ of a friend of mine had to be sent to a lunatic asylum as a result of her attending what they call here a revivalist-preaching. The dose of hell-fire and brimstone was too much for her.”

He saw how various missions were competing for collecting money and pouring calumny on each other. “Those to whom religion is a trade,” he observed, “are forced to become narrow and mischievous by their introduction into religion of the competitive, fighting and selfish methods of the world.”

Having witnessed their ways, many educated Americans were losing respect for the missionaries. On the other hand, they were eager to listen to exponents of other cultures. “I have more friends,” he wrote in a letter to India in 1895, “than enemies, and only a small number of the educated care about the missionaries. Again, the very fact of the missionaries being against anything makes the educated like it. They are less of a power here now, and are becoming less so every day.”

While Vivekananda caused a stir among the intellectual elite of America as was obvious from reports in the American press, the missionary circles were infuriated. “The Christian missionaries,” wrote The Indian Mirror on June 23, 1897, “rage and fume over the success of Swami Vivekananda’s mission in America. In its impotent fury, the Missionary Review of the World says that ‘Swami Vivekananda is simply a specimen of the elation and inflation of a weak man over the adulation of some silly people. If America ever gives up Christ, it will be for the devil, not Buddha or Brahma or Confucius. It will be lapse into utter apostasy, unbelief and infidelity.’ The writer, when penning these lines, was evidently under a fit of insanity brought on by the unlooked for spectacle of a Hindu preacher making disciples among American members of the Christian Church.”

The Christian Literature Society which had its headquarters in London and a branch in Madras published a book, Swami Vivekananda and his Guru with letters from prominent Americans on the alleged programme of Vedantism in United States, in 1897.

The book was reviewed by The Indian Mirror which wrote, “The object of the first part of this book is to show that, on account of his Shudra birth and for his want of knowledge as well as on the part of his Guru, Vivekananda is not qualified for teaching the Vedanta; that he, in consequence of his doings, is not entitled to be called a ‘Swami’; that Schopenhuer, the admirer of the Upanishads, was a bad man, and that Professor Max Muller (in connection with his opinion of Vedantic books) is a ‘man having two voices’.”

Rev. Dr. W. W. White, Secretary to the College Young Men’s Christian Association of Calcutta, had written to “a number of ladies and gentlemen of America, mostly belonging to missions and educational institutions” in order to find out if there was any “likelihood of America abandoning Christianity and adopting… Hinduism… in its stead.” The replies he had received were reproduced in the second part of the above-mentioned book. “Some of the writers say,” continued The Indian Mirror, “that the Swami made no impression on the people, while some others asserted that the Swami may have made a few converts, but such converts were vaccilators and seekers of novelty. All of them consoled the enquirers with the assurance that Christianity had made a firm footing in America and there was no fear of its being Supplanted by any other religion.”

Vivekananda had said again and again that he was not out to make any converts to Hinduism and that what he aimed at was the deepening and purification of Christianity which had been vulgarised by theologians and debased by missionaries. But the missionaries had their fears and wanted to be reassured that their citadel was not in danger of imminent collapse.

There was a corollary to Vivekananda’s defence of Hinduism and critique of Christianity, particularly of the Christian missions. He called upon Hindu society to open its doors and take back its members who had been alienated from it by foreign invaders. Christian as well as Islamic missionaries were taking advantage of Hindu orthodoxy which was reluctant to receive those who had been forced or lured away from the Hindu fold but who were now ready to return to the faith of their forefathers. Vivekananda viewed this orthodoxy as nothing but a blind prejudice induced by the Hindus’ deep distrust of imported creeds.

The distrust he regarded as well founded but the prejudice against victims of force or fraud as unjustified. His thoughts on the subject were expressed in an interview he gave to the representative of the Prabuddha Bharata, a monthly magazine started by his disciples in Madras. The interview, published in the April 1899 issue of the monthly, deserves to be reproduced at some length:

“I want to see you, Swami,” I began, “on this matter of receiving back into Hinduism those who have been converted from it. Is it your opinion that they should be received?”

“Certainly,” said the Swami, “they can and ought to be taken.” He sat gravely for a moment, thinking, and then resumed. “Besides,” he said, “we shall otherwise decrease in numbers. When the Mohammedans first came, we are said – I think on the authority of Ferishta, oldest Mohammedan historian – to have been six hundred millions of Hindus. Now we are about two hundred millions. And then every man going out of the Hindu pale is not only a man less, but an enemy the more.

“Again, the vast majority of Hindu converts to Islam and Christianity are converts by the sword, or the descendants of these. It would be obviously unfair to subject these to disabilities of any kind. As to the case of born aliens, did you say? Why, born aliens have been converted in the past by crowds, and the process is still going on.

“In my own opinion, this statement not only applies to aboriginal tribes, to outlying nations, and to almost all our conquerors before the Mohammedan conquest, but also to all those castes who find a special origin in the Puranas. I hold that they have been aliens thus adopted.

“Ceremonies of expiation are no doubt suitable in the case of willing converts returning to their Mother-Church, as it were; but on those who were alienated by conquest – as in Kashmir and Nepal – or on strangers wishing to join us, no penance should be imposed.”

“But of what caste would these people be, Swamiji?” I ventured to ask. “They must have some, or they can never be assimilated into the great body of Hindus. Where shall we look for their rightful place?”“Returning converts,” said the Swami quietly, “will gain their own castes, of course. And new people will make theirs. You will remember,” he added, “that this has already been done in the case of Vaishnavism. Converts from different castes and aliens were all able to combine under that flag and form a caste by themselves,-and a very respectful one too.

From Ramanuja down to Chaitanya of Bengal, all great Vaishnava teachers have done the same.”

“And where should these new people expect to marry?” I asked. “Amongst themselves as they do now,” said the Swami quietly.

“Then as to names,” I enquired, “I suppose aliens and converts who have adopted non-Hindu names should be named newly. Would you give them caste-names, or what?” “Certainly,” said the Swami, thoughtfully, “there is a great deal in a name” and on this question he would say no more.

“But my next enquiry drew blood. ‘Would you leave these newcomers, Swamiji, to choose their own forms of religious belief out of many visaged Hinduism, or would chalk out a religion for them?’ “Can you ask that?” he said. “They will choose for themselves. For unless a man chooses for himself, the very spirit of Hinduism is destroyed. The essence of our Faith consists simply in this freedom of the Ishta.”

Vivekananda paid a second visit to the West from June 1899 to December 1900. During his stay in California in February-May 1900, he received a gift of 160 acres from one of his American admirers. The society which he had founded during his first visit for the propagation of Vedanta, had now a home in America. It was named the Shanti Ashram.

This is not the place to tell the story of how the precedent set by Vivekananda was followed in years to come by many other Hindu missionaries.

It should suffice to say that today no country in the West is without Hindu presence in some form or the other.
Seekers in the West have become increasingly aware of the major schools of Sanatana Dharma – Yoga and Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism, Shaivism and Vaishnavism, Shaktism and Tantra. The impact of Vivekananda in his own country was far more momentous.

He had taken over from where Bankim Chandra had left. Among the writers and thinkers of modern India, Bankim Chandra had fascinated him the most. During his lecture tour in East Bengal in 1901 he is reported to have advised Bengal’s young men to “read Bankim, and Bankim, and Bankim again.” Small wonder that Bankim’s AnandamaTha inspired revolutionary organisations fighting for India’s freedom and his Vande MAtaram became the national song par excellence when the awakening brought about by Vivekananda burst forth in a political movement soon after his death in 1902.

by Sita Ram Goel

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Rani Chennamma

Rani Chennamma sent a letter to Governor at Bombay to plead the cause of Kittur, but Lord Elphinstone turned down the request leading to all out war. The British tried to confiscate the treasure and jewels of Kittur (valued around Fifteen Lakhs of rupees) and attacked with a force of 200 men and four guns, mainly from the third troop of Madras Native Horse Artillery. In the first round of war, during October 1824, British forces lost heavily with St John Thackeray, Collector and Political agent, killed by the Rani’s forces. Two British officers, Sir Walter Elliot and Mr. Stevenson^[ were also taken as hostages.

Rani Chennamma released the hostages with an understanding with Chaplin that the war would be terminated. But Chaplin treacherously continued the war with even more soldiers. Chennamma fought fiercely with the aid of her lieutenant, Sangolli Rayanna, but was ultimately captured and imprisoned at Bailhongal Fort, where she died on 21 February 1829. Sangolli Rayanna continued the guerrilla war up to 1829 until his capture, but it was in vain, and was caught due to treachery and hanged.

Chennamma was born 56 years before the 1857 rebel Rani of Jhansi, and was thus the first woman to fight against British governance and the kappa tax. Her legacy and first victory are still commemorated in Kittur, during the Kittur Utsava of every 22–24 October. On 11 September 2007 a statue of Rani Chennamma was unveiled at the Indian Parliament Complex by Pratibha Patil, the first woman President of India. Her statues are installed at Bangalore and Kittur also. Rani Chennamma’s samadhi or burial place is in Bailhongal taluk, but is in neglected state with poor maintenance and the place is surrounded by a small park maintained by Government agencies.

Rani Chennamma’s samadhi or burial place

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