6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

460 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
paying off all other liabilities* !
1104. This continuous process of British administra­
tion, this neatness and precision in its work, its capacity to
organize and govern, to run a vast and complicated
administration, shine all the more gloriously when contrasted
with the confused way of doing things, prevalent in our
country at that time, our lack of order, political instability
•and our complete disregard for well-organized work !
Although it is unjustifiable to show the similarity and
difference between the British nation and our own, as they
at the time were, by such a solitary and comparatively insig­
nificant instance as this, it may still serve as a pointer—and
a very effective pointer at that—-to show how the once petty
East India Company could become in the end the Honourable
Company Sarkar Bahadur which ran the imperial administra­
tion of India*.
1105. Although the total defeat of our Hindu nation
-at the hands of the British had always been rankling in our
hearts like a deep-rooted and envenomed arrow, we had
never repudiated it or glossed over it, not even detracted
from the victory of the British people over us by scolding
-and railing at them under false pretexts. For, we had the
•courage and ability which had never died away to avenge
that defeat of our Hindu nation. On the contrary we
•sincerely believed that in this bitter war between the Hindu
and the British nations it was on the whole natural that the
British who were at that time superior to us in the art of
war and strength, should succeed over us. We knew that
the success or defeat on the battlefields never obeyed the
•dictates of the code of justice or injustice.
1106. For this reason, as soon as the British imperial
power was established in India the innermost heroic spirit
in the country took up the gauntlet to vanquish the British
nation on the battlefield itself by resorting to some
Nrusinhian act of aggressive heroism.
1107. After the British snatched away the imperial
authority from its hands the defeated Hindu nation lay for