| That
is why for a thou sand years Mahmud's destruction of the shrine has been burnt into the
Collective Sub-conscious of the race as an unforgettable national disaster. Perhaps, that is why, in my college days, my imagination turned to
the shrine that was no more, with pride and grief, in my articles Grave of Vanished
Empires and the Conquest of Somanatha; and my mind turned to the history of ancient
Gujarat for writing romances, when I adopted "Jaya Somanath" the national cry of
Gujarat, as a symbol of her inspiration for future greatness. That was why in 1947,
writing my novel in Kashmir, my imagination lived in the drama of Mahmud's march to
Somanatha. |
