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

began their onward march right up to Rameshwaram and for all these
twelve hundred years or so from A.D. 711, to the time the British left India
in 1947, the Hindus had been rotting in slavery. This assumption is as false
as it is insulting to the Hindus. This is an unbearable perversion of facts.
659. Hereafter, at least a truth-loving writer of history should
scrupulously avoid this falsehood, this perversion of facts from school or
college textbooks as also from those of a greater worth and importance.
These three hundred years
660. For during these three hundred years i.e., up to A.D. 1000 or so in
the whole of India, right from Hindukush to Ceylon and to Burma in the
east, the Hindu Sovereign states ruled proudly. At such an early date as
that, the Hindu kings in the south such as the Cher, Chowl, Pandya,
Rashtrakut and others, sometimes the one, at others the next, ruled the vast
southern seas so powerfully as to call themselves Trisamudreshwar. To say
that the whole of India sweated in slavery under the Muslims or some
other rulers, ignoring its prosperous and independent sovereign status, is to
belie history.
From A.D. 1000 To A.D. 1030
661. All of a sudden, like a comet, rose Mahmud of Ghazni at this time.
At his accession to the throne, he vowed to Muslimize the whole of India
and as has been already described in paragraphs 365 to 375, carried on a
series of depredations and arson, religious persecution and rapes, and
pollution and conversion, throughout the vast tract from Multan in Punjab
to Someshwar in Sourashtra.
662. But it is because, at such cataclysmal times, the Hindus showed
exemplary valour and perserevence and forbearance in facing all these
calamities, never losing self-respect or courage, that Hindu states could
again raise their banners overthrowing the Muslim ascendancy hardly
within twenty-five to thirty years of Mahmud Ghazni's death in A.D.
1030, with the sole exception perhaps of the northern part of Punjab
beyond the Indus. This can surely be cited as the astonishing illustration of
the tenacity of any nation for that matter.
663. Secondly, it must be remembered that during the thirty or forty
years of the political havoc wrought by Mahmud of Ghazni in the north,
the whole of South India had been displaying daring and adventure while
enjoying independence, prosperity and the mastery of the three seas as
nonchalantly as before.