India ! He wove ropes of sand; he attempted the impossible. It is beyond the power of any man, it is opposed to the divine law of the universe, to establish the swaraj of such a caste— ridden, isolated,
internally-torn sect over a vast continent like India."*[1]
Shivaji and his father-in-law Gaikwar were Marathas, i.e., members of a despised caste. Before the rise of the national movement in the Deccan in the closing years of the 19th century, a Brahman of Maharashtra used to feel insulted if he was called a Maratha. "No," he would reply with warmth, "I am a Dakshina Brahman." Shivaji keenly felt his humiliation at the hands of the Brahmans to whose defence and prosperity he had devoted his life. Their insistence on treating him as a Shudra drove him into the arms of Balaji Avji, the leader of the Kayasthas, and another victim of Brahmanic pride. The Brahmans felt a professional jealousy for the intelligence and literary powers of the Kayasthas, who were their only rivals in education and Government service, and consoled themselves by declaring the Kayasthas a low caste not entitled to the Vedic rites and by proclaiming a social boycot of Balaji Avji who had ventured to invest his son with the
sacred thread. Balaji naturally sympathised with his master and tried to raise him in social estimation
- ↑ * From his Rise and Fall of the Sikh Power, as translated by me in Modern Review, April 1911.
