Akbar sent Raja Man Sing and Asaf Khan against Rana Pratap of Mewar in 1576. There were Rajput soldiers on both sides; those under Rana Pratap were f… - Pratap Singh

The most powerful monarch of the world relentlessly attempted to destroy one man, and he braved all adversities to emerge triumphant.... Thus died the greatest hero of medieval India, the bravest of the brave whose sturdy frame was exhausted by almost two decades of constant fighting. We may here quote V. Smith’s fitting epitome of his reign: “The emperor desired the death of the Rani and the absorption of his territory in the imperial dominions. The Rana, while fully prepared to sacrifice his life if necessary, was resolved that his blood should never be contaminated by intermixture with that of the foreigner, and that his country should remain a land of freemen. After much tribulation he succeeded, and Akbar failed.”™ (338-9)

One may very well ask the purveyors of this puerile propaganda that if the record of Islam in medieval India was so bright and blameless, where is the need for this daily ritual of whitewashing it. Hindu heroes like Chandragupta Maurya, Samudragupta, Harihar, Bukka, Maharana Pratap, and Shivaji, to name only a few of the notables, have never needed any face-lift.

This was the Swadeshi Movement led by Sri Aurobindo. It was renascent India’s first experiment in mass mobilization. Powerful mantras such as svadeshI and svarAjya, first invoked by Maharshi Dayananda, came to the fore and fired the people’s imagination. The struggle against Western imperialism in all its forms including Christianity became linked with the earlier struggle against Islamic imperialism. Maharana Pratap, Shivaji, Guru Govind Singh and Banda Bairagi resumed their full stature as national heroes after having suffered an eclipse in the national memory.