भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

convert every Hindu to Islam. If the Hindus did not willingly take to Islam,
they were to be forced to do so, or else the men were to be slaughtered and
the women were to be distributed as slaves among the Muslims.
558-560. This campaign by Tipu of pollution and proselytization of the
Hindus was so thorough and ruthless, and it was carried to such vast
dimensions, that there was universal wailing and a sense of unimaginable
horror throughout the Hindu community in the State. Not only the soldiers
in his army but even the Mullah-Maulvis in the meanest of villages too,
with the Muslim hooligans and ruffians to help them, began a systematic
persecution of the Hindus! At a later date, Tipu invaded Malabar and at the
first stroke, converted a hundred thousand Hindus in that one single coastal
district. Then overtaking the Karnataka, he even marched on the Maratha
territory. Millions of Hindus from Dharwar to Travancore were horror-
stricken, and hundreds of men and women from all castes and sects of the
Hindu society feeling thoroughly incapable of facing its armed attack of the
Muslims, preferred death by drowning themselves in the Krishna and the
Tungabhadra to all the indignities and atrocities of Muslim vandalism.
Hundreds of others leapt into the fire but did not become Muslims!
Tipu’s Arrogant Proclamation!
561. Puffed up by the speedy success of his atrocious aggressions upon
the Hindus and diabolically elated at their miserable plight, Tipu once
proudly declared in his court that his campaign of mass conversion of the
Hindus was accomplished beyond all expectations. On one occasion, he
said fifty thousand Hindus in his kingdom were converted hardly within
twenty-four hours! No other Muslim Sultan before him, he proudly stated,
could have achieved that stupendous success, but that by the grace of Allah,
he had been able to perform that amazing task of the spread of Islamic faith
and the total annihilation of the kafirs!
562. In order to carry on this prodigious task, Tipu formed a special
division of his army, which surpassed all other Muslim soldiers in enormity
and vandalism. He manned it by the pick of the bitterest enemies of the
Hindus and most lovingly called them his own sons. Whoever of those
loving sons of his did some exceptionally brutal act of ravaging Hindu
women, of forcibly converting Hindu families, of plunder and arson, or of
wholesale massacre was rewarded with the youngest and most beautiful of
the thousands of Hindu girls captured from different parts of the State.