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

The Beginning of the Final Overthrow of
the Muslim Empire
818. Soon after slaying Shree Dharmarakshak (Nasir-ud-din), Ghyasuddin
Tughlak ascended the throne of the Delhi Sultanate in A.D. 1321 and issued
a proclamation to that effect. This was the end of the Khilji dynasty and the
beginning of the Tughlak rule.
819. Ghyasuddin too was old. Naturally, he treated the Muslims leniently.
But although born of a Hindu jat mother, he strangely enough did not fall
short of any type of religious persecution of the Hindus perpetrated by any
or all of the former Muslim Sultans!
820. Ghyasuddin died in A.D. 1326 and was succeeded by his son
Mohammed Tughlak, who has gone down in history as ‘crazy’. He once
had a strange whim of shifting his capital from Delhi to Devgiri in the
south. Immediately, he changed the name of Devgiri, according to the
Muslim tradition, into Doulatabad, just as Warangal had been changed
earlier by the Muslim into Sultanpur. But this change of capital from Delhi
to Devgiri caused him and his subjects so much trouble, disrupted his
already confusion-fraught revenue system so completely, and so many
insurrections and political risings were brewing in the royal families and the
people at large in the Deccan (as already pointed out in the previous
chapter) that this ‘crazy’ Mohammed was ultimately forced to have another
whim of shifting the capital once again back to Delhi. But this short
interlude cost millions (crores) of rupees and thousands of lives.
820A. With a view to getting out of this financial trouble, he introduced
the copper coins, which drained his treasury completely; but he blamed the
farmers and the other gentry for it, saying that they did not pay the taxes.
He, therefore, issued orders to his fighting forces to collect the revenue
under compulsion, but while the Muslims were shown all leniency in the
collection of taxes, the Hindus were most cruelly forced to pay them. Just as
the beasts are surrounded on all sides in a hunting expedition and are held at
bay and then massacred, similarly a number of Hindu towns and villages
were besieged and the Hindu population therein was mercilessly put to the
sword. (This sort of persecution devastated numerous Hindu towns and
villages, while whole province like Kanouj were rendered desolate!)