This poem is founded on the historical incident of the heroic self sacrifice of Baji Prabhou Deshpande, who to cover Shivaji’s retreat, held the pass of Rangana for two hours with a small company of men against twelve thousand Moguls. Beyond the single fact of this great exploit there has been no attempt to preserve historical accuracy.
Baji Parabhou was written by Sri Aurobindo in 1909-1910. He was then in the thick of the Freedom struggle as a leader of the nationalist Party. The poem is, in a way, a reflection of his intense love for Mother India. It is full of a deep spiritual fervour portraying the leaders as instruments of a divine power, Bhavani, the Goddess who presides over the detiny of India.
Baji Prabhou is a heroic poem, written “in the true sense of the epithet, in the heroic blank verse” and the language is “granite in its strength and at the same time as brightly flexible and resonant as a Damascus Blade”.
You can also find a translation in Hindi