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

are bygones; today we are born Muslims and are Muslim nationals. We
recognize no other relation with the Hindus than the one of utmost hatred
and animosity." Such thoughts had turned their heads completely. Theirs
was not merely a change of religion, but it was the inevitable change of
nationality which necessarily forced itself upon the later generations of
such converts. During the five or six centuries of the initial Muslim
invasions of India, right up to Rameshwar to which we are referring here,
the change of religion today generally proved to be the change of
nationality for the future!
But what does Religion mean here?
380. But the terms 'religion' and 'religious conversion' in the above
maxim, viz. the 'the change of the religion means the change of
nationality', should first be defined clearly. They are not used here in the
sense of comparative study of the various philosophical ideas and systems
in different religions or the adoption of some of the agreeable ones in an
individual capacity. The word 'religion' in the present context relates solely
to the dogmatic and fanatical practices of those aggressive religious
institutions, which insist that a particular book is apocalyptic, that whatever
is told in its pages—and that alone and nothing else—is truly religious, that
everything else is completely false and sinful. It then tries to enforce on
people of other religions the strict observance, if not by advice and peaceful
discourse and persuasion, even by skilful craftiness, cruelty and coercion, of
not only the so-called philosophy in those religious books, but of the rules
and regulations, of rites and rituals, of the language and social dealings
prescribed by them. The religious conversion effected by such thoughtless
and fanatical religious institutions is, in effect, the conversion of nationality.
Retaliatory Weapon of Ostracism
381. The Hindus could find no retaliatory weapon for this religious
aggression of the Muslims. The weapon of ostracism, which they used for
retaliation, turned on themselves like a boomerang.
382. In order that the reader should have a clear idea of this weapon of
social ostracism, so far as it concerns the Hindu-Muslim war and how it
affected, not favourably, but adversely the defence of the Hindu religion
and Hindu community, it is essential to give first of all an account of the
caste-system as briefly as it is possible to do so. Since such an account is
absolutely esential for an analysis of the Muslim pollution of the Hindus.