Pascal, I wager, the Dutch book of thy Pensées
Was Savarkar's Marathi for Harbhat Pendse's
Ah! Animula vagula, twixt Jyoti's gang-rape and Pratibha's Suttee
Revere who Rudra, recall na Vishnu-hu pritivi-pati!
Notes
1) V.D. Savarkar read Herbert Spencer (affectionately known, he tells us, as Harbhat Pendse) in Marathi translation as an adolescent. Spencer awoke in him a great indignation at British exploitation of India. Sadly, Savarkar failed to see the idealistic humanism and revolutionary potential of the British working class- people like Guy Aldred, 'the boy preacher of Holloway', who took over publication of the 'Indian Sociologist' and served a harsh sentence of penal servitude for his temerity. Spencer's Economics/Evolutionary Theory did not have the benefit of Game Theoretic insights and should, perhaps, be re-examined at least from the point of view of Bergson's critique of him.
2) na Vishnuhu pritivipati- Vishnu is the Lord (or husband) of the Earth. Suttee- i.e. Sati- is the wife of Shiva that is Rudra.
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