Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Srimati Savitri Dëvi Mukherji (Maximine Portaz, Maximiani Portas)
Title : The Non-Hindu Indian and India Unity
Year : 1940

Link download : Savitri_Devi_-_The_Non-Hindu_Indian_and_India_Unity.zip

PREFACE. In July last, (1940) I saw the tomb of Sultan Tippu, near Seringapatam. It lies three or four miles away from the ruined walls of the city, in a lonely place. I walked through a beautiful garden to the room where the gallant Indian is sleeping his last sleep by the side of his father Hyder Ali, and of his mother. There was not a soul to be seen, and the only sound I could hear was the endless lamentation of the wind in the high trees. The overwhelming quietness penetrated me. Words read upon a tombstone in Europe, years and years ago, came back to me as an expression of the ultimate goal of all life: “Peace, perfect peace.” Then suddenly, I thought of India, — that India whom I have made mine. Tippu died for her to live and flourish. Did he die in vain? Centuries of decay and disaster, of foreign invasions and internal strife, rushed before my mind. “Will India ever enjoy peace — not the stillness of the dead, but peace in the joy of life”? And it was as if something from within me answered: “Yes, if one day the Indians can forget social prejudice and communal hatred, and love one another.” I soon reached Tippu’s tomb, and stood by it, lost in my thoughts. The picture of the ruined defences of Seringapatam was vivid in my mind. I also remembered the spot where the Sultan was found dead after the fall of the city, and the little I had read in my childhood about Tippu took a new colour and a new sense, there, before the stone under which he lies. All that I had learnt in India also took a new colour and a new sense. The inessential matters which, too often, are taken as fetishes by both Hindus and Mohammedans, and become the occasion of inter-communal squabbles, were forgotten. I could only think of one thing in the silence of the room where lies the great Tippu, who died for India’s freedom, and that was that India’s latent craving for internal peace and unity should put an end to communal strife, and make us all march together, — one heart, one will, — like those who fought, then, under the walls of Seringapatam. The room itself was to me a sanctuary, for it contains not a Mohammedan, not a Hindu, not a man, but a symbol of everlasting India. And, I bowed down before Tippu’s tomb as I would have done before the sacred image in any Hindu shrine. When I got up, I saw an old man standing by my side, with a book in his hand. It was the “visitor book”; the old man asked me in Hindustani if I would like to write something in it. Under the signatures of half a dozen European tourists, I wrote: “May the spirit of the Indian warrior who lies here inspire us all, — Hindus and Mohammedans alike, — and guide us in our present-day struggle for national independence.” There was peace in the air; peace also in the old man’s eyes. In the high trees, the endless lamentation of the wind was like a song of peace. And when I reached the gates of the silent enclosure and came in contact with life once more, the innocent laughter of a few children along the road made me dream of a future India where communal consciousness would be no more. I wrote this booklet on my return to Calcutta, as an immediate continuation of the thoughts inspired in me by my visit to Sultan Tippu’s tomb and to the ruins of his fortress. Savitri Devi. Calcutta, September 1940 ...