Pepople Thought...
Swami Vivekananda
Shivaji was the greatest Hindu king that India had produced within the last thousand years; one who was the very incarnation of lord Siva, about whom prophecies were given out long before he was born; and his advent was eagerly expected by all the great souls and saints of Maharashtra as the deliverer of the Hindus from the hands of the Mlecchas, and as one who succeeded in the reestablishment of Dharma which had been trampled underfoot by the depredations of the devastating hordes of the Moghals”
Sir E. Sullivan
“Shivaji possessed every quality requisite for success in the disturbed age in which he lived. Cautious and wily in council, he was fierce and daring in action; he possessed an endurance that made him remarkable even amongst his hardy subjests, and an energy and decision that would in any age have raised him to distinctions. By his own people he was painted on a white horse going at full gallop, tossing grains of rice into his mouth, to signify that his speed did not allow him to stop to eat. He was the Hindu prince who forced the heavy Mughal cavalry to fly before the charge of the native horse of India. His strength and activity in action were glory and admiration of his race.”
D. Kincaid
“In spite of the character of a crusade which Ramdas’s blessings gave to Shivaji’s long struggle, it is remarkable how little religious animosity or intolerance Shivaji displayed. His kindness to Catholic priests is an agreeable contrast to the proscriptions of the Hindu priesthood in the Indian and Maratha territories of the Portuguese. Even his enemies remarked on his extreme respect for Mussulman priests, for mosques and for the koran. The Muslim historian Khafi Khan, who cannot mention Shivaji in his cronicle without adding epithets of vulgar abuse, nevertheless acknowledges that Shivaji never entered a conquered town without taking measures to safeguard the mosques from damage. Whenever a koran came to his possession, he treated it with the same respect as if it had been one of the sacred works of his own faith. Whenever his men captured Mussulman ladies, they were brought to Shivaji, who looked after them as if they were his wards till he could return them to their relations.”
Rabindranath Tagore
poem-
“In what far-off country, upon what obscure day
I know not now,
Seated in the gloom of some Mahratta mountain-wood
O King Shivaji,
Lighting thy brow, like a lightning flash,
This thought descended,
Into one virtuous rule, this divided broken distracted India,
I shall bind.”
Indira Gandhi
“I think Shivaji ranks among the greatest men of the world. Since we were a slave country, our great men have been somewhat played down in world history. Had the same person been born in a European country, he would have been praised to the skies and known everywhere. It would have been said that he had illumined the world.”
Samarth Ramdas Swami
निश्चयाचा महामेरु, बहुत जनांस अधारु |
अखंड स्थितीचा निर्धारु, श्रीमंत योगी ||
या भूमंडळाचे ठायी, धर्म रक्षी ऐसा नाही |
महाराष्ट्रधर्म राहिला काही, तुम्हा करीता ||
The pinnacle of determination, protector of people,resolute in intent, wealthy yet detached from his opulence…
..There is no other on this earth, who has protected any people; It is because of you that the culture of Maharashtra survived