“ A tattered English book kept on the same rack had left a lasting impression on my mind. That book was A Short History of the World. I had studied English till third standard at home. My curiosity towards history was awakened since childhood. As soon as I read the name of that book, I felt as if I had got hold of a benevolent Paras. I felt that the whole treasure of history was in my hands. But the first page of that book was not there and the language inside was English. Persuaded father and he agreed to tell little by little daily. Then I understood that it is only a section, not the whole history. The history of Arabia was beginning in this section. I asked my father, ‘What was before the history of Arabia written in this book?’ Dad said, ‘It’s got the first page torn, it’ll be in there.’ He started searching for that page, but could not find it. I became sad and in the same sadness such a question appeared in my mind that what if that page is found? Even in that, from where it would have been started, what was there before that, this question will still arise. What is this torn book without the first page, which has the first page, that history book must also have been actually written mostly from the second page only.
And it became a doctrine. It was not possible for me to have knowledge of any science in that childish age like the inference of logic etc. Nevertheless, this theory came spontaneously and got stuck. If you keep searching for the past history of human, then you will reach the monkey, if you search for monkey, then you will reach the bacteria, from bacteria to the vegetation and to its land, to its sun, no matter how far you go back and forth, but whatever you touch, you will find nothing of its past.
In my poem ‘Saptarshi’, I have said that it is possible to have a fragmentary history, but it is not possible to find the first part of world history. And this theory came to me spontaneously while searching the first page of a world history book –
अन्यों का केवल, जो भौमिक उसका
न संभव सबका
विश्व-इतिहास चाहिए
तेरे चारों ओर घेराव विकलों का
कल्पों के विमान से
या तारों की सीढ़ियाँ चढ़ते
जाए तू ऊँचे-ऊँचे खोजता कितना भी
इतिहास का पहला पृष्ठ नहीं मिलना
नहीं दिखना,
प्रारंभ तेरा दूसरे पृष्ठ से होना
अभिशाप है यह, अभिशाप है । ”
source : Savarkar Samagra Vol 1
photo source : TheRampage.org Photo
