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

fought pure and simple political wars with them with effective strategical
counter-moves and vanquished them completely. As these wars were purely
political in nature, the question of religiosity or irreligiosity, of extreme
kindness, truth, violence or non-violence or other fine distinctions of
principles never arose! Naturally, the tendency to retaliate in the same
fashion even on the religious front—to face religious aggression with
counter religious offensives—to meet cruelty with supra-cruel blows, craft
with super-craft, violence with extreme violence and to consider this war
policy to be a highly religious duty of a brave warrior—lay dormant in our
national mind, because there was no occasion for them to use such war
tactics on the religious front long after the religious wars with the
Rakshasas.
645. Moreover, during this intervening period, the different religious sects
that were really the offshoots of the Vedic religion, and had a strong
propensity to Sanyas (renunciation or asceticism) and extreme non-violence
like the Ajivakas, the Jains, the Buddhists and others, preached to the
society that true religion meant extreme non-vidence, kindness, love and
truth and nothing else. Among the rest of the Vedic population, class
distinctions and their development into caste differences and the religious
traditions about food-exchange, touchables and untouchables, which cut to
pieces the composite life of the society, were growing stronger and these
very, really anti-social traditions came to be considered as true religion.
Later on, flesh-eating was prohibited even in the sacrificial rites. The fact
that the extreme forms and manifestations of truth most often prove to be
the harmful vices was lost sight of by the religious ideology of the time,
while the excessive inopportune and suicidal use of virtues, which ruined
the nation, was itself considered the highest form of religious conduct.
Generally speaking, truthful conduct is a virtue. To satisfy a promised gift
or word is also a virtue! But when in the heat of extolling virtues to the
skies, the Puranas (mythological stories) told the story of Harishchandra,
who made good his promise given to Vishwamitra in his dream by
presenting him with his kingdom and such other childish stories, they
definitely changed the national war-policy into an imbecile, weak and
suicidal one. No words can adequately condemn this influence of the
Puranas. More respectable than this truthful conduct was considered the
practice of non-violence as the highest form of virtue, not only by the Jains
and the Buddhists but in some of the Vaishnav texts also, which later on