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

Hindus could not withstand their earlier invasions. But as those wild and
valorous Muslims from beyond the Himalayas began to settle down here for
centuries together, generation-after-generation, and as many of their
dynasties ruled here, they, too, were victims of laziness, mildness, and
proclivity towards luxurious living. They could not retain their former
sturdiness, endurance and savage strength, which could stand them in good
stead on the battlefield. The ‘unhealthy’ climate of India did not fail to tell
upon their originally strong wild bodies! On the whole, the descendants of
those very Muslims came to be weaker and ‘not true to their mettle’. That is
why the Hindu, especially the Marathas could vanquish only those
Muslims!
1054. How very imperfect and unrealistic is this statement! Only one
instance of the Maratha offensive against the Rohillas and the Pathans in the
Doab and the fact that the Marathas killed as many as twenty thousand of
the enemy in the action is quite sufficient to prove the falsity and platitude
of the above estimate of the Muslim failure! The Pathan-Rohillas ruling
from the Doab to Rohilkhand at that time considered themselves to be
‘high-born’ Afghans of the finest mettle. Even the Moghal imperial power
and the Turkish Nawabs and chieftains dreaded them most. These Afghans
had even at that time close and uninterrupted blood relation and family ties
with the ‘original’ stalk of the Afghans beyond the Himalayas. Every year,
hundreds of those ‘true-bred’ and ‘real’ Afghans came to reside in this
Pathanistan in the Doab, while the Afghans here went over to their original
homes. It clearly means, therefore, that the thousands of the Pathan-Rohillas
in the long tract between the Doab and the Rohilkhand were till that time, at
least, ‘real’ and ‘original’, ‘true-born’ and ‘thorough-bred’ Pathans and
Afghans! And the Marathas? They belonged, after all originally and
traditionally, to that country—India—which her enemies called sterile-born
and brought up there for
generations together!
Even then, did they not often prove these so-called ‘true-born’ and
‘thorough-bred’ Pathans and Afghans to be of baser mettle in the final test
on the field of battle? Even when Nadirshah fell upon Delhi with an army of
the thousands of his ‘true-born’ and ‘thorough-bred’ Pathans, crowned
himself ‘Emperor of Delhi’ and threatend to march to the South like
Mahmud of Ghazni, is it not because he realized in his heart of hearts that
the times had then changed—that it was not the India of Ghazni’s times—