SOMANATHA RISES AGAIN
The restoration of the hoary temple of Somanatha which contains the first of the twelve
jyotirlingas was an act of historic justice that warmed the heart of the nation. And it
was because of Munshi's indefatigable efforts that the shrine of Somanatha rose again like
the phoenix from its ashes.The sack of Somanatha by
Mahmud Ghazni had left a deep wound in the nation's soul and it hung like a stalactite in
the cave of Indian memory. It was but natural that a sensitive person like Munshi should
have felt the wound deeply. He has confessed that when he first read Brigg's Cities of
Gujarat, the wound bled profusely and he gave expression to his distress in an article
entitled Gujarat, the Grave of Vanished Empires which was published in the Baroda College
magazine.
Later when he came to Bombay, Munshi studied all the
available material about the sack of Somanatha and wrote two articles on the subject,
which were published in the East and West, then a leading monthly of Bombay. Between 1915
and 1922, Munshi wrote his famous historical trilogy in Gujarati in which he resurrected
the glories of Chalukyan Gujarat.
He felt that a nation which did not take pride in its past
could have no future and it was his aim, through his novels, to recapture the glory and
the grandeur that was Gujarat. |