| Festivals of Bharat |
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Shivaji's
extraordinary achievement lay precisely in establishing such a
centre of people's faith which even after his death continued to
inspire his successors to enlarge their area of freedom-battle so as
to encompass a major part of the country in course to time. They
even finally succeeded in breaking the backbone of the Islamic
hegemony both of the Moghals and the Deccanites. To Shivaji,
undoubtedly, belongs the chief credit of lighting up the torch of
the final freedom struggle against the several centuries old Islamic
aggression, and ultimately reducing that foreign slavery to ashes.
Rightly did the great Hindi bard Bhushana, who forsook the royal favors of the Moghal court to come over to Shivaji to record his glories, sing: Kashiji
ki kalaa jaati, Mathura masjid hoti | (The artistic beauty of Benaras would have perished, Mathura would have turned into a masjid, and all would have been circumcised, had not Shivaji been born). |
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