भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)
Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History by Veer Savarkar
by स्वातंत्र्यवीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर
३. तृतीय स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ: सम्राट विक्रमादित्य एवं शकों का समूल उच्छेद
- Whatever instances we have quoted of the Hindu religious counter-
aggressions so far in this chapter are, of course, only exceptions,
considering the many centuries of the Hindu-Muslim epic war. They were
inadequate attempts to patch up the shattered firmament. But it is because
some Hindus performed brave deeds, befitting the valour of the Hindu
nation, of retaliation to the Muslims on the religious front, that the Hindu
side was not completely overthrown. The Muslim enemy always feared that
even the Hindus also could avenge religious persecution on occasions. If
without losing any time, the whole Hindu society had adopted the same
military strategy on the religious front as these exceptions of Hindu heroes
did in launching counter-offensive, not a single Muslim could have
remained as a Muslim in this country—at least at that time. This, we have
often shown in earlier chapters of this book. - But then why didn't all the other Hindus dare do so? Why were they
afraid? Why did they feel it to be against their Hindu religion itself, to
launch such armed counter-offensive against the Muslims? Why did they
come to consider the various bans on repurification, sea voyage, eating and
drinking and others, as the true religious codes of conduct for the Hindus?
The answer to all these questions—the justification of their conduct—the
Hindus of those times offererd, was that such an armed retaliation would
not have been beneficial to the best interests of the Hindus, nor did it
become the Hindu civility—Hindu culture! They meant to say that in those
times of repeated terrific Muslim onslaughts if the Hindu kings and society
had reconverted their unfortunate brethren, who were converted to Islam, or
would have launched counter-attacks on the religious front and again, as we
have suggested, converted the Muslim men and women to Hinduism, the
Muslims would have been still more enraged and again-and-again in their
fresh attacks, they would have wrecked far more appalling vengeance on
the Hindus. It was this fear, they said, that prompted the Hindus to accept,
as an exceptional code of conduct suitable for the adverse circumstances,
those various bans and the morbidly perverted concept of virtues, which
amounted really to abject surrender.
553A. So, in order to refute these and other illogical arguments, and to
support our arguments and opinions and the various references we have
made in the foregoing discourse, we shall cite another event, which will go
to prove conclusively our inference that the HINDUS HAD THE ABILITY
AND STRENGTH TO LAUNCH ARMED COUNTER-OFFENSIVES
EVEN ON THE RELIGIOUS FRONT BUT THEY HAD NOT THE WILL
TO DO SO!
554. That event is the Maratha war with the Muslims in the South, that
destroyed Tipu Sultan!
❑
.
Tipu Sultan, The Savage
555. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the Maratha Empire
had become so expansive and so powerful as to have brought about the de
facto overthrow of the Moghul Empire at Delhi. The Hindu power had no
Muslim rival state to oppose it effectively throughout the length and breadth
of India, right from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari. But at this very time,
Hyder Ali, an ordinary Muslim soldier, had been gradually rising to power
in the army of the Hindu State of Mysore and had already become quite
indispensable. Even after the sad experience of centuries together how the
very Muslim servants, in whom the Hindu kings had placed complete
confidence and whom they had brought to prosperity and power, had
betrayed those very Hindu masters most treacherously ever since the times
of Mahmud of Ghazni and Ghori, this Hindu King of Mysore committed the
same blunder. Because of his usual artless, and almost unwise attitude of
equality to all religions, which was imbibed assiduously amongst the
Hindus in general, King Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar or more particularly his
Chief Minister, Nanjeraj, entrusted the supreme military command to this
fanatical Muslim adventurer, Hyder Ali. The consequences were inevitable.
Hyder Ali set aside Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar, with a little pension and
usurped the throne of Mysore. He once marched against the Marathas also
but was so sorely beaten by them on the battlefield that he dared not give it
a second trial again. He had also once attacked the English at Madras
successfully. But as we are not concerned here with the other activities of
his, it would be sufficient simply to add that after his death in 1782, he was
succeeded to the throne of the Hindu State of Mysore by his equally
unscrupulous adventurer of a son, Tipu Sultan-1.
556. As soon as he came to the throne, Tipu wiped out even the name of
the original Hindu King and proclaimed himself the Sultan of a Moslem
state. Tipu was the last of the Muslim rulers to establish a new independent
state, and style himself a Sultan during the millennial Hindu-Muslim war.
557. True to the usual Muslim tradition, Tipu performed his first duty as a
Sultan of announcing publicly in the very first session of his court (Darbar),
that he would see to it that all the kafirs were made Muslim willy-nilly. He
commanded all the Hindus in his state to embrace Islam. He ordered his
various officers of high and low ranks in every city, town and village to
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.
- The whole of the Muslim world was, no doubt, overcome with the
highest gratitude to Tipu Sultan for his unprecedented success in the violent
propagation of the Muslim faith. He was honoured as Gazi, the hero of the
Islamic faith by his Muslim brethren all over. Naturally, the whole of the
Muslim community was, thus, a party to this fanatical persecution of the
Hindus by Tipu. Especially, the whole of the Muslim society from
Karnataka to Travancore, which had collectively but actively participated in
these artrocities, richly deserved punishment from the Hindu standpoint.
Now at Poona - Now on hearing the piteous cries and heart-breaking screams of the
persecuted Hindus of Mysore, there arose a violent surge of fury at Poona,
the capital of the Maratha Empire, which was duty-bound to defend
Hinduism. The Maratha diplomats and warlords decided forthwith to invade
Mysore in order to crush this new demon of a Sultan in South. The Chief
Administrator of the Peshwas, Nana Phadnavis issued an instant order to all
the available Maratha chieftains to march on Tipu from all sides with huge
armies.
War with Tipu - Tipu was extremely annoyed to learn that the Maratha forces were
proceeding against him. So, before the main Maratha battalions could arrive
to their rescue, he maliciously attacked Nargund and Kittur in quick
succession. These two very small Hindu states were very close to Mysore
and far detached from the Maratha territory. - Tipu hated all the Hindus, yet more vehemently the Brahmins, who
were foremost in trying to kindle in the Hindu Society, a burning pride for
their religion and self-respect. He had reached the limit of his brutality in
persecuting the Brahmins more than any other caste of the Hindus. The
great historian Sardesai writes: 'Brahmins were singled out for special
indignities by Tipu.' The rulers of Nargund and Kittur were both Brahmins
and both of them had spitefully declined his demand for immediate
surrender. Furiously, therefore, did Tipu march first on Nargund and then on
Kittur at the head of a very powerful army. The ruler of Nargund Bhave
fought bravely to the bitterest end but for want of any timely assistance
from Poona, his small army was easily vanquished. The moment the city of
Nargund fell, Tipu, like a hungry wolf, rushed straight to the ruler's palace,
his Muslim army burning and plundering the citizens and their houses.
There he arrested the ruler Bhave himself and his valiant minister Pethe,
and put heavy fetters on their hands and feet. They and their relatives, their
families and friends were all subjected to unbearable torture. The brutal
humiliation Tipu himself inflicted on the royal ladies in the palace and
caused his followers to perpetrate elsewhere in the city, is beyond all
description! The young and fair ones of the royal ladies were first put to
inhuman torture and then brutally ravished. Tipu locked in his harem, the
exceptionally beautiful young lady from the royal family and took her to his
capital. The sight of the inhuman and disgraceful treatment meted out to her
daughters and daughters-in-law, nieces and grand-daughters broke the heart
of Pethe's grand old mother and she died instantaneously.
567. Tipu's army too spared no pains in torturing and violating the Hindu
men and women in the city of Nargund and plundered to their fullest
satisfaction, the palatial residences of the wealthy Lingayats as also every
single house of the commonest of Hindu citizens. Finally, setting fire to
their houses, Tipu carried away the select Hindu men and women as abject
slaves.
568. Tipu next fell violently on the other Hindu state of Kittur and
stamped it out of existence in the like manner. He himself repeated and
made his army repeat to the letter all the infernal outrages, which were
performed at Nargund, on the Kittur ruler, his family, all the men and
women in his pay and all the people in the city.
569. By this time, the main body of the Maratha army was advancing
rapidly, reconquering the regions and cities formerly subjugated by Tipu.
Skipping over the other details of this campaign on Tipu, which are not
quite pertinent to the topic in hand, we think it quite sufficient to say that in
the end, Sardar Patwardhan Phadke, Behare Holkar, Bhonsale and other
Maratha Chiefiains routed the Muslim armies of Tipu on various battle,
fields and after rescuing the whole of Karnatak, pressed him back up to
Mysore and there, encircled him into a tight grip! Snatching this
opporutunity of Tipu's distress, the English at Mudras too marched on him.
As the strokes of the Maratha swords and the thrusts of their spears began
to make bloody incisions on the back of Tipu's religious fanaticism, the
devil in him began to relent and his haughtiness began to temper down.
Tipu grew despondent.
And then Tipu fell at the feet of Hindu Gods
570. Whether to appease the Marathas or to win back the millions of
Hindus groaning sorely under the yoke of his religious persecution, Tipu,
all of a sudden, began to make munificent grants to Hindu temples. He even
had new idols ceremoniously installed in the big temples, formerly smashed
to pieces by his own Muslim hirelings. He requested the Hindu Brahmins lo
pray to their gods in various Hindu temples that he might get success in this
war with the Marathas. In order to please the very Brahmins he hated most
bitterly and tortured mercilessly, he now paid them large sums of money.
He had ceremonial prayers made. He himself paid great homage to Shree
Shankaracharya (of Shringeri), to avert the imminent calamity and asked for
his blessings, which the great man readily gave. Tipu not only attended the
Chariot-festival of certain Hindu gods at Kanchi, but he himself walked in
the festive procession. With his own hands, he ignited the fireworks to
heighten the festive spirit of the occasion.
Demons Worship Gods
571. It is said that even devils start worshipping those gods, who have the
weapons powerful enough to destroy the enemy.
But neither God nor Devil came to save the wicked Tipu from that
calamity and at last, after two or three expeditions, the Marathas and the
English forces subjugated the whole of his kingdom. Tipu himself was
killed in 1799 and his dominions were divided. The small portion formerly
belonging to the Hindu King of Travancore was returned to him, and the
original royal family of the Vodyars was reinstalled at Mysore. Some of the
remaining territory was taken over by the English, while the large tract from
Karnataka to the Tungabhadra river was annexed by the Marathas to their
empire. All the Hindu states, which he had vowed to wipe out at the time of
his accession to the throne, began once again to rule peacefully in their own
places. If any one was totally ruined, it was Tipu himself with all his
Muslim territory.
Hindus’ Success
572. Thus, the violent religious aggression under Tipu’s leadership, which
the Muslims in South India had launched and perpetrated with a crescendo
against the Hindus during the two decades or so immediately preceding the
year A.D. 1790, was heroically and successfully put down by the Hindus
politically, as well as, on the battlefield.
Muslims Gain
573. Maratha warriors, claiming to defend Hindu religion, smashed the
Muslim military and political might, as has been already described. But
they did not simultaneously deal any counter-blow to their religious front,
in order to repulse and avenge their all-out attempt to disrupt Hinduism,
their mass conversions of Hindus, their most heinous attacks upon the
chastity of thousands of Hindu women. They did not severely penalize the
perpetrators of these crimes. No, they did not do anything of the kind to
attack the Muslim religion in return!
The Result
574-575. The inevitable consequence was that the two or three hundred
thousand forcibly converted Hindu men and women and children remained
groaning with agony in the clutches of the Muslim community in South
India. Although Tipu’s political power perished completely under the
heavy counter-blows of the combined Maratha-English swords and spears,
the religious domination he forced on the millions of Hindus grew ever
stronger and stronger in the absence of any counter offensive. The future
generations of these converted Hindus, in the absence of any immediate
reconversion, went on adding rapidly to the numerical strength of the
enemy of Hinduism, by at least one and a half times or twice as much.
Being brought up from birth under the Islamic influence, this future
progeny of the Hindu converts became the inveterate enemies of the
Hindus, and instead of desiring to come back to Hinduism, they cherished
like the wolf in the ‘Aesop’s fables,’ the fiendish ambition of converting
the rest of the Hindus to Islam. They considered it their most sacred duty!
576. If the Marathas had so retaliated, all those two or three hundred
thousand Hindu men and women recently converted during those four or
five years of the war with Tipu, would have, in all probability, courted
Hinduism most willingly because of the love they bore for their original
families and relatives, and because of the pangs of separation they suffered.
Their devotion to and fascination for their recently lost religion, their love
and affection for their separated Hindu fathers and mothers, sons and
daughters, relatives and friends, must have at that time been so acute and
fresh as to cause them many a heartache, and to make them shed many an
agonized tear at their slightest mention and recollection.
577. How very simple it would have been, at that time, to reconvert all
those luckless two or three hundred thousand Hindu brethren and absorb
them all in the Hindu society!
578. After Tipu’s defeat, the victorious Maratha armies of Sardar
Patwardhan, Holkar, Raste and other great chieftains were returning
triumphantly to Maharashtra from their respective fronts and by different
routes. Their multiple infantry, cavalry and artillery brigades were gaily
fluttering their saffron-coloured banners and rending the skies with their
war-cry ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ And in those very districts, towns and cities of
Mysore, Karnataka and Maharashtra, through which these warriors paraded
their victorious exultation, lay rotting and slaving in various Muslim
houses, the thousands of abducted Hindu women, while men equally large
in numbers, were leading a miserable life of shame and remorse for their
forced conversion to Islam. The exultant war cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev’ of
these Hindu warriors, following closely the glad news of victory and the
downfall of the Muslim state of Mysore, must have informed them of the
triumphal march of the Maratha conquering armies through their own
towns, villages and cities. How eagerly these unfortunate Hindu converts—
and especially the women—must have hastened to crowd the windows,
doors, fissures and small openings of those Muslim prison-like houses and
cottages, to have, at least, a fleeting glimpse of those martial processions!
And how keenly must their sorely afflicted hearts have felt the happy yet
acutely painful pangs of intense expectation of imminent deliverance from
those satanic Muslim dungeons and confines! ‘At last—at long last—they
have come! ’They might have said to themselves, “Our/my Hindu brothers
have come trampling down the wicked hearts of the Muslim tyrants to
deliver us from their abject servitude!’ On occasions, some of them might
have very probably seen their own fathers or brothers or husbands or
relatives or at least some neighbours proudly strutting through the streets in
their triumphal marches!
The lack of will
579. On such occasions, if only these proudly marching military
detachments of Hindu warriors had simply willed it, they could have in no
time set free those thousands of miserable Hindu men and women rotting in
Muslim bondage. They could have simply gone on doing it just as they
passed along the streets! So simple the whole thing really was. But...!
580. For, at that time, the Muslims, neither individually nor collectively,
had any courage or strength left in them to oppose the triumphant Hindu
army. At the approach of the Maratha soldiery, the Mullah-Maulvis and the
rogues, knaves and brigands were at great pains to hide their faces into
whichever nook or ditch they could find, in order to save their lives.
580A. If only one gay blast from the Maratha bugle had rung out and
reverberated through every town and every village, assuring the people in
some such manner! “Come, O you, Hindu mothers and sisters, come! You,
who have been wickedly polluted and forced to do all sorts of menial and
dirty wretched work in the Muslim household, come out, come under our
protection! We, your foster-brothers, have come lo your doors in order to
rescue you and take you to your respective families. Whichever Muslim
comes to obstruct you, dies instantly. May that Muslim be then a man or a
woman of high rank or low! Similarly, O you helplessly converted Hindu
brethren come, join us when and where you can; join our conquering
brigades! The moment you gather under this Saffron-coloured Hindu
banner, you will have every sort of protection.”
580B. If only such a reassuring blast was heard and echoed through towns
and villages, thousands upon thousands of those ill-fated Hindu converts,
men and women, mothers and sisters, would all have rushed most willingly,
and of their own accord to join those Maratha warriors, and they all could
have been most easily purified and reconverted to Hinduism, and the
Muslim religious victory under Tipu’s leadership would have been totally
nullified.
But alas! Nobody ever thought of this!
581. Neither those Maratha warriors, nor their commanders, nor the
Sardars and Chieftains nor the Shankaracharyas, nay not even the Peshwa at
Poona, nor the Chhatrapatis of Satara and Kolhapur—alas! not a single
Hindu soul ever dreamt of this simple way of reconversion of those ill-
starred Hindus! Nobody of them ever felt ashmed of marching straight
ahead, without casting so much as a sympathetic glance at the thousands of
the brutally ravaged Hindu mothers and sisters! Their martial drums and
pipes proclaimed to the world their military and political victory! The
Maratha companies and battalions proudly paraded through the villages,
towns and cities, supremely unconcerned about the two or three hundred
thousand of their miserable Hindu brethren in Muslim bondage. No, no! not
a single miserable soul was at that time reconverted to Hinduism!
582. The natural consequence of it all was that, those thousands of our
brutally converted Hindu mothers and sisters anxiously waiting for the
victorious Hindu armies to set them free from those hellish tortures and
death-like humiliation in the Muslim prison-like homes, must have most
probably turned away from the doors and windows in utter despair! To see
none of the soldiers ever caring to recognize and pity them—let alone to
rescue and reconvert them—must have rent their hearts in two! They must
have resigned themselves helplessly to the Muslim bondage and rotted till
death, bringing forth Muslim offsprings! What wonder if they might have
borne the bitterest grudge against these unavailing Hindu brethren!
583. On the other hand, the Mullah-Maulvis and the Muslim hooligans
and rogues, who had so far disappeared underground for fear of death, very
soon came to know that neither those victorious armies, or their chiefs, nor
even the rulers and administrators of Hindu states, were going to punish
them individually or collectively for all the wrongs they had perpetrated
against the Hindus. Being thus assured of safety, they came out boldly and
began to move about freely and enjoy, as their legal right, the abducted
Hindu women and the plundered Hindu property as their own. It also might
have happened that many Hindus had the misfortune to witness meekly
with their own eyes, their own daughters and nieces and daughters-in-law
slaving as wives or maids in Muslim houses in their own villages and
towns. But, strangely enough, neither the Hindu population there nor the
Hindu administrators nor again the officers at those places, ever thought of
freeing any of those luckless ladies! Hardly any such instance is recorded in
history. For, the Hindus had cultivated a shameless religious conceit for
over centuries together, to suffer all the heart-rending humiliation without a
prick of conscience. Nobody, as a rule, is ashamed of a thing that is not
considered blameworthy by the society. Because of the one ban on
reconversion, what was this shameless perversion of ideas and emotions to
which the Hindu society had brought itself!
A heap of Contemporary Documentary Evidence
584. Abundant information in all details is now available about this war
with Tipu. Histories written in English by Marshman and others, those in
Marathi by Rao Bahadur Sardesai and the contemporary correspondence of
the then English diplomats, administrators and political agents and
ambassadors have been published. Research scholars such as Rajwade,
Parasnis and Khare have brought to light heaps of letters by the Chiefs of
the Maratha States, their subordinate officers and ambassadors and agents,
of merchants and men of rank in the society, of various people in political,
religious and social walks of life. A clear picture paints itself of the daily
routine life of the Hindu Society of the time, its habits and customs, its
codes of religious, political and social conduct, its ethics and philosophy, if
one cares to read the dispatches of the great personalities of the times such
as Haripant Phadke to Nana Phadnavis at Poona about his association with
Lord Cornwallis at the battle of Shreerangpattam against Tipu, those about
his high-level discourses on war-moves and treaties, down to the letters
describing the raids of robbers and pilgrimages of devout pilgrims, letters of
(Travels and those giving market rates, and also those of Shankaracharya
complaining about the ransacking of his ‘Ashram’!
585. But no evidence can be generally found in all this heap of documents
to show if anyone was yearning to avenge the Muslim atrocities and their
religious victory over the Hindus. No Hindu commander, nor a small troop
of soldiers, nor even a group of men, is ever reported to have drawn swords
to rescue the converted Hindu women and to cut down the Muslim
miscreants. No one is reported to have felt any shame at the humiliation of
these unfortunate women and at the Hindu failure to rescue them. These
hundreds and hundreds of letters show a lamentable want of realization—
not to speak of any anxiety about it on the part of the Hindu society, that
day by day, they were losing territory and power so far as their religion was
concerned. Howsoever strange and sad it might appear, the fact cannot be
gainsaid. Not a word seems to have been breathed or recorded about the
retaliation of the Muslim atrocities—let alone its actual execution!
586. We may set aside the whole heap of contemporary documents, but we
cannot help referring to one letter of Haripant Phadke in particular. The said
letter was written to Nana Phadnavis, informing him of the two sons of
Tipu, taken as hostages by the Marathas and the English, to ensure the
prompt execution of the terms of the treaty, which was signed by Tipu after
his defeat. Writes Haripant Phadke, perhaps casually, to show how they had
brought Tipu to such a miserably low condition:
586A. “Lord Cornwallis sent the two sons of Tipu to me. When I saw
them, they pleaded they were hungry. I sent them to a neighbouring tent and
ordered that they should be well fed. Then after some time, they were
returned to the English camp of Lord Cornwallis!”
586B. The incident referred to in this letter and the one we are shortly
going to quote here, with reference to the Battle of Kharda hold as it were,
to a searching analysis under the X-ray, the perverted sense of virtues,
which had permeated, through centuries, to the marrow of the Hindu
society, rendering it slovenly and imbecile, and insensible to all sorts of
shameful humiliation.
587-588. Haripant Phadke’s genial treatment of Tipu’s two sons reminds
us of another incident, which by contrast, will give us a practical illustration
of our discussion of the perverted Hindu sense of virtues in paragraphs 405
to 471.
588A. In the first or the second decade of the seventeenth century, the
tenth Guru of our Hindu-Sikhs, Dharmveer Shree Govind Singh found it
impossible to continue the war with the Moghuls. He was at last besieged in
the fort of Chamkaur along with his sons. Overcome with terror, some of
his sworn disciples from the Sikh army conspired to desert their Guruji,
renounce their Sikh religion and left the fort secretly. Two elder sons of the
Guruji were killed before his eyes in the battle. At last, in the face of such
grave danger, the Guruji advised all to leave battle and run for life,
wherever they could. Finding a suitable opportunity, he made good his own
escape. But in that confusion, two of his sons, of a tender age of 12 or
below, missed the way and fell into the Muslim hands. How did the
Muslims treat them according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE?
589. The Letter of Haripant Phadke referred to above shows how kindly
and sympathetically, according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE, the
Marathas treated the two sons of Tipu, when they came into their hands.
590. On the contrary, as soon as the brave cubs of Guru Govind Singh fell
into the Muslim hands, they were taken straight to their war council and
asked: “Are you willing to be Muslims? If so, you will be given your life
and everything you want. Otherwise nothing!” The children answered: “We
won’t be Muslims even if our life is not spared!” Immediately, the diabolic
Muslim justice decreed that the two small children be forthwith built alive
in a brickwall! While they were thus being built in, they were asked, as
each brick was placed on the wall, “Do you become Muslims?” The two
brave Hindu cubs would reply again and again: “No, we won’t be
Muslims!’ The last brick was laid on the heads of both the young martyrs
and they ceased to breathe! Then today, a true Hindu enters the vicinity of
that scene of martyrdom, he will very likely hear the words reverberating
the whole atmosphere there: “I won’t become a Muslim: nay, not at all! I
am a Hindu, I am a Sikh! I bravely court death!”
591. Supposing that by an adverse turn of events, two children of our
Peshwas were to fall in the hands of Tipu or any Muslim ruler—what then?
He would not have fed as the Hindu-hearted Haripant Phadke did, the two
tender-aged children and returned them to the Peshwa! Such a behaviour
would have been considered sacrilegious and cowardly, according to the
Muslim religious belief; they would most probably have been built up alive
in brick-walls or else would have been crushed under an elephant’s foot.
The Hindus, on the other hand, would not have avenged such brutality with
any hyper-brutal retaliation, even if they had the strength and opportunity to
do so. For, the virus the perverted sense of virtues had been flowing through
their arteries and veins for centuries together.
592. It should be made clear at this very stage, that the ethics of war, which
demanded that a charioteer must fight with another charioteer only, the
sword should meet another sword alone, that the armed warrior ought not to
fight with an unarmed one, till he has been armed equally, that a fallen
senseless warrior was never to be attacked till he had regained
consciousness etc. etc., was perhaps quite suitable for the ancient times
before Mahabharat. For both the contending parties obeyed the same set of
rules: both worshipped the same ethics of war. The Pandawas themselves
had violated, at the instance of Lord Krishna, many of these chivalrous rules
of war! But the Hindus of these middle ages forgot the lesson taught by the
Bhagwat Geeta, of giving due consideration to the time, place and person or
persons concerned, while obeying these rules of war. They, on their own part
kept on fighting the diabolic Muslim ways of war with the same old—
originally sane and civilized, but now outmoded and so highly suicidal—
tactics in war.
592A. Besides this incident of Tipu’s two sons, we should like to cite
another—equally shameful for the Marathas and the Hindus, inasmuch as it
offers another illustration of the perverted sense of virtues of the Hindus of
those times! It happened during the Battle of Kharda (1795 A.D.) against
the Nizam, the last restlessly writhing remnant of the Muslim power at
Delhi! The Nizam was at that time completely at the mercy of the Marathas;
he would have been wiped out of existence and saved all further trouble,
but for the shameless exhibition of this perverted sense of virtues, by the
Marathas!
593. The Maratha forces with their excellent strategic moves had encircled
the Nizam at such a desolate and dry place, that his vast army could get no
food or water. The scarcity of drinking water was so acute that hundreds of
Muslim soldiers drank stinking water from dirty pools, not fit even for
animals. Nizam-Ali himself was almost in tears. And at this most critical
moment, the big Maratha guns began to rend the skies with their
thundering.
- But at this most crucial moment, the Maratha war cabinet was seized
with such a paroxysm of their age-old incurable disease of the perverted
sense of virtues, viz. misplaced generosity to withhold the strokes and allow
time to even the inveterate fainting enemy to regain consciousness, that had
it lasted a little longer, the scales of war would have turned against the
Hindus themselves and the Muslims would never have failed to annihilate
them completely. At a time when the Nizam himself, the chief enemy of the
Marathas, was dying of thirst and when the Marathas luckily had the best
opportunity of capturing him alive and of destroying his whole army, the
Peshwa, Sawai Madhavrao, was inspired with the grand idea that the true
greatness of a warrior was to show mercy to the downcast enemy. He,
therefore, sent in consultation with his war-cabinet, a very valuable supply
of water enough for the Nizam and his royal family from his own stock of
drinking water, which was preserved with no less difficulty. And this was
done in the thick of the fray—quite consistently with the maxim: क्षमा
वीरस्य भूषणम (Forgiveness is the virtue of the brave). [Remember for a
contrast ‘The Battle of Samugad or Shambhugad’ (1658 A.D,) and the siege
of Agra by Aurangzeb—Shahjahan was brought to his knees by cutting off
the water supply to the fort of Agra.]
A fine illustration of self-contradiction! - A common belief seems to prevail that the Hindus strictly banned
any reconversion of Muslimized Hindus or any conversion of born
Muslims, because they dreaded fresh outrages from the Muslims in India
and perhaps new horrible invasions of foreign Muslims, resulting in untold
monstrocities and consequent horrible retribution. - It is purposely to show how erroneous, unrealistic and wholly
improbable this belief is, that we have quoted the episode the Maratha war
with Tipu, which provides ample historical evidence to support all the
points we have made so far. - Setting aside that episode of the war with Tipu for a while, it is
enough to pose a question: If at all the Hindus were so terribly and
incessantly obsessed with the dread of Muslim retaliation, they would have
offered no resistance, however slight it might have been! They would never
have counter-attacked the Muslims on the political and military fronts and
won at great odds. For, it is only in those Hindu states, which the Muslims
conquered, that such religious persecution of the Hindus was, or would
have been, possible for the Muslims. If at all the Hindus were to dread
anything, they should have dreaded the Muslim armed political aggression
first. But barring minor incidents and looking at this gigantic struggle in one
broad sweep, the reader can clearly see that in order to protect their states
and religion, the Hindus had fought grim and determined battles right from
the times of Mahmud of Ghazni's and Ghori's demoniacal raids. They lost
their states, they won their states! Defeat and victory, victory and defeat!
The fortunes of the fields changed in quick succession! But for more than
seven centuries, the Hindus kept on fighting the Muslims throughout the
whole of India, fought every inch of it and finally brought the mighty
Muslim enemy to his knees in abject surrender! To say that these Hindus
would have ever cared a two-pence for the fiercer rage of the Muslim
revenge, is in itself, a fine illustration of self-contradiction!
598. Of course, the Muslims had never to worry in the least about the
security of their religious domination in India! The Hindus were firm as
regards one thing: never to convert any Muslim, not to counterattack the
sphere of the Muslim religious influence; nor again to harm them in any
way in matters religious; for, all these actions were completely contrary to
the Hindu religious faith! The Muslims had only one anxiety as to how to
spread the Islamic faith incessantly throughout the length and breadth of
India, even if the Hindus had reconquered political power! We have already
discussed at different places in this book, the tremendous loss to the Hindu
nation this Muslim religious aggression had caused. Only two major points
need a brief resume here.
Loss of thirty million Hindus
599. Even in those days, the Hindu society was quite aware of this
numerical loss! But because of their morbid ban on reconversion, no
effective remedy could be found against this drain of its lifeblood. Very like
the invalid patient, meekly bearing the death-pangs of an incurable disease,
the then Hindu world endured this blood-draining, deadly disease!
Loss of Territory!
600. But graver still than this loss of numerical strength, was another: the
permanent loss of the vast territory snatched away by the Muslim religious
incursions, slowly, bit by bit, but steadily, without the knowledge of the
Hindus! THE MUSLIMS THUS SEIZED FAR MORE HINDU LAND
THROUGHOUT INDIA BY CONVERSION THAN THEY DID BY
CONQUESTS!
- For, twenty to thirty million Hindu converts and millions of foreign
Muslims that flocked to India to seek their fortune, settled permanently in
India alone! The land—the cities and towns and particular parts of cities
and towns and villages that were inhabited and were to be inhabited by
these Muslims and their descendants to come in future—were permanently
lost to the Hindus, never to be regained! On these tracts and patches of land
fluttered nonchalantly, the green Muslim bands indicating the unimpeded
sway of the Muslim religious faith all over! The Hindus, and more
particularly the Marathas, wrested away practically all the political power
throughout the whole of India from the Muslims towards the end of this
epic Hindu-Muslim war. Yet the Muslims retained their hold individually or
collectively on the masses and on property too! - Again, as the Muslim population grew rapidly because of polygamy
popular amongst them, and the spread of their religion by conversion, more
and more land was to that extent being gradually but surely occupied by
them and was passing for ever into the Muslim hands. In order to give some
idea of the actual condition, it is enough to say that even after the
establishment of the de facto sovereignty of the Marathas, every little town
or village had a separate part known as Musalmanwada or Musalman
mohalla! Why, even cities like Poona, Satara, Kolhapur, Nagpur in
Maharashtra, Baroda, Devas, Dhar, Indore, Gwalior and Udaypur in Central
India and Jodhpur, Jaipur, Amritsar, Lahore right up to Shreenagar in
Kashmir in the north, each had a separate section exclusively colonized by
thousands of Muslims and known as ‘Muslim-pura’ or ‘Muslim-abadi’. The
Muslims not only dominated these separate sections religiously, but
practically became their owners! - And the fun of it was that this religious domination of the Muslims
and their individual right to that land had been constitutionally and legally
protected by the Hindu kings themselves, giving them equal civil status as
subjects along with the Hindus! Especially, because of open and deep-rooted
enmity between the Hindus and the Muslims in those days, and as change of
religion was then tantamount to change of nationality, all the land that passed
into the Muslim hands, this way or that, was in reality, permanently given
over to the national enemy of the Hindus! - Thus, throughout the whole of India, in every village and town and
city and province, big or small Muslim pockets (Muslimistans) were being
created and fostered right from those days. That again means that from that
time, India was being vivisected unwittingly between two parts: the Hindu
India and the Muslim India!
605. THESE BIG OR SMALL ISLAMISTANS WERE REALLY THE
TIME BOMBS LAID BY THE CONVERT MUSLIM RELIGIOUS
AUTHORITY IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE HINDU POLITICAL
SUPERSTRUCTURE!
606. Yet neither the Hindu rulers, nor the common people, nor even the
historians of the time seem to have apprehended, acutely or even faintly, the
instantaneous or the belated consequences of this tremendous loss of
numbers and territory. For, nobody else has so far tried, as we are doing
here, any bold, lucid and comprehensive historical exposition of this loss of
numbers and territory that the Hindu nation had to suffer because of the
morbid Hindu religious concepts of various bans and their perverted sense
of virtues! If at all there be any such attempt, it is bound to be an exception.
607-608. Moreover, had the Hindus at that time really understood the full
significance of the above-mentioned evil consequences of the Muslim
religion dominance, the Maratha government would have immediately and
definitely launched a counter-religious aggression upon the Islamic faith in
the south, the moment its leader, Tipu, was politically vanquished. For, the
Hindus had never before had such a completely favourable opportunity as
they had it then, to launch such a counter-offensive on the religious front.
Throughout the whole of India, there was left no Muslim power at that time,
which could even so much as think of opposing the Marathas, as we have
already pointed it out, and as our contemporary bard sings in one of his
heroic ballads with evident pride for Hinduism—
जलचर हैदर निजाम इंग्रज रणकरिता थकसे।
ज्यानि पुण्याकडे विलोकिते ते संपत्तिता मुकते॥
[The pirates (meaning the Portuguese), Hyder, the Nizam, the English all
were exhausted fighting (with the Marathas). Whoever looked (with
enmity) at Poona, lost their wealth!]
Devil can be Fought by arch-devil only
609. Suppose, as soon as this propitious time had come, the Maratha
Chieftains such as Bhonsale, Holkar, Patwardhan, Raste and others, who
had fought against Tipu, the Maratha administrators, the Peshwa and the
Chhatrapati, had promulgated, in consultation with the prominent religious
authorities, some such order (if not actually couched in the same words) as
the following:
610. “Just as the valour of the Maratha warriors had trampled under their feet
the Muslim rule of Tipu, in a similar way, in order to bring to the lowest dust
the Muslim religious preponderance under the fiendish Tipu, which has so far
inflicted every sort of brutality and humiliation on the Hindus and to chastise
those guilty of these heinous crimes, our government had decided to attack in
return the Muslims on the religious field.
611. “Faithfully following the interpretation of the religious law and the
religious code of conduct by Shree Shankaracharya Vidyaranyaswami,
whose authority is considered next only to the Very First Shree
Shankaracharya by the whole of the Hindu world, we hereby, for the first
time, propose to break the psychological ban on reconversion, which has
simply paralysed the Hindu society, so far as the retaliation of the tyrannical
Muslim religion is concerned, and we hereby order every single official of
whatever rank to make the necessary arrangements to enforce the strict
observance of the following instructions.
612. “On learning about the forcible conversion of Hindu men and women
in his particular jurisdiction, every village and city-officer shall gather
together all such oppressed Hindus in some rescue camp under the
government protection, and shall attend to all their needs.
613. “Every several Muslim man and woman in every town and village, in
whose house or hut Hindu women, girls and children might be found
slaving as oppressed converts, shall along with the whole family, be
forthwith bettered and thrown into prison, and the miserable Hindu women
and children after being immediately set free, shall be affectionately and
courteously taken to the rescue camps.
614. “Similarly the warriors from Tipu’s select company of the direst
young Muslim scoundrels, whom he fondled as his ‘sons’, shall be fettered
with very heavy shackles wherever they will be found in Maharashtra,
Karnatak or elsewhere and locked in jails, and the fairest young and
innocent Hindu women, who were given away as reward to those Muslim
young rogues from this brigade for their brutal atrocities towards the
Hindus, should all be rescued and sent with all civility to the said rescue
camps.
615. “Finally, a national reconversion week will be announced by a
superior officer, before which all the rescued Hindu converts from the
rescue camps all over the particular region shall be conducted in large
groups under military guard to the holy places adjoining their native places
or to Dharwar or Badami or other places where the oppressive Muslim
armies have been destroyed by the Marathas. At all these places, shall these
oppressed Hindu converts be reconverted to Hinduism en masse. At all
these places, sacrificial fires should be lit and offerings made for the
repurification of all these millions of Hindu converts, and they should all be
received in the Hindu Society ceremoniously with chorus-singing of praises
for the Hindu religion. All those who are likely to be willingly, lovingly and
honourably received by their original families, should be escorted to their
original homes and rehabilitated in those families. But the thousands of
other repurified and reconverted Hindus, who may not find such a loving
reception in their original sub-castes, should all be classed as a new warrior
class in the structure of the Hindu society—अग्निकुल—a fire race
according to the Rajput legend—and all the political and religious
authorities in the land are hereby ordered to concede to them, all rights due
to a Hindu as equitably and justly as the other caste Hindus enjoy.
616. “Then, in order, to reward the meritorious services of the choicest
Maratha warriors in this Hindu-Muslim war, at least as many young and
beautiful Muslim girls should be captured, converted to Hinduism and
presented them, as were the Hindu girls distributed by Tipu amongst the
daredevil warriors of his select brigade.
617. “Thereafter, the thousands of Muslim rascals and scoundrels, who
have, in this Hindu-Muslim war, inflicted harrowing atrocities on the
Hindus, raped Hindu women and girls, have broken holy images of Hindu
gods and goddesses and have demolished their temples, and who will have
been locked as per the above-mentioned order in various prisons, shall be
conducted under strong military guard to the four or five chief cities that
will be signified later on by the Superior Officers. They should, especially,
be taken to Nargund and Kittur—the places where Tipu himself had
inflicted inhuman atrocities on the Hindu men and women with the aid of
his diabolic army, so that Tipu’s devilish acts might be avenged with equal
ferocity and with the harshest punishments meted out to the daredevil
soldiers of his Islamic brigade in the very presence of the afflicted people
there. On the appointed day, during the reconversion week, these hundreds
of Muslim devils should be brought under strong armed guard of soldiers
and cannons to the vast parade grounds and after the charge sheets against