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

because in spite of his Hunnish extraction, he had become a faithful
follower of the Vedic religion and lulled Buddhism for its feebleness.
(Chapter 4—Paragraphs 284 & 285). But after Mihirgula, when Sindh went
under the sway of the Vedic Hindu kings, the Buddhists no longer suffered
any such persecution. They were free to follow their own religion so far as
it concerned only with their own selves.
The Buddhist Traitors
326. Nevertheless, these Indian Buddhists were elated to see the Muslim
foreigners’ march against the Hindu kingdom. These Buddhists, who bore
malice towards the Hindu, perhaps thought that these new Muslim
aggressors might embrace their Buddhist cult, as did their forerunners, the
Greeks under Menander or the Kushans under Kanishka, and establish a
Buddhist empire over India. So they went and greeted the Arabian-Muslim
leader, when he captured Port Deval from the hand of King Dahir. They
appealed to him in some such way saying following:
326A. “We have nothing to do with Dahir and his Vedic Hindu cult. Our
religious faith differs very widely from theirs. Our Prophet, Lord Buddha,
has taught us ‘Ahimsa’ (Total Abstinence From Violence). We never take
arms and dabble with political affairs of the state. Whoever wins can be the
ruler of the state, we obey him in all matters temporal. You are now the
victor, so now you are our King! Never suspect for a moment, that we shall
even enlist ourselves in Dahir’s armed forces or help him in any way. So we
pray that the Buddhist should not be subjected to any indignities or troubles
at your hands.”
326B. Complying with some such request of the Buddhists, which
amounted to complete surrender, the arch diplomat Kasim gave them
temporary assurance of safety.
327. On receiving the news of the fall of Port Deval, King Dahir, on the
other hand, mobilized his army and took the field. Kasim too, on his part,
went ahead subjugating some parts of Sindh. The Muslim writers or tarikhs
(reports), who have recorded the details of this campaign, testify that the
Buddhist in Sindh helped the Muslims in every possible way, while the
latter marched onwards, by showing them difficult passes, providing them
with foodstuff and fodder and supplying them secret military intelligence.
Some few Vedic Hindus also were guilty of this treachery, but their attempts
were individual and exceptional.
King Dahir dies Fighting on the Battle-Field

328. At last, the main forces of the Muslims and the Hindus joined battle
     at Brahmanabad. The Hindus fought fiercely. Although the Muslims then
     had no cannon, they had firearms of a new type the Hindus did not possess.
     Naturally, the latter began to find themselves weaker in strength. Moreover,
     the Arab platoons that were in the pay of Dahir rebelled, when the Hindu-
     Muslim armies came to close quarters; the Arabs informed him that they
     would not fight against Mohammed-bin-Kasim since the latter was a
     Muslim as they themselves were, and that it was a religious crusade against
     the Kafirs. What more, they even marched on their Hindu master himself.
     This artlessness of the Hindus in placing complete faith in the enemy met
     the same fate, whenever in future a Hindu King employed Muslim soldiers
     in his army. This very often caused the Hindu strategy to topple down and
     made their battle-arrays ineffective.
329. Nevertheless, without letting this betrayal of the Arab platoons cause
     any confusion in his ranks, King Dahir mounted his elephant and kept on
     fighting in the thick of the fray. But when he himself was killed in the
     battle, the Hindu army was routed, and the Muslims, in hot pursuit, entered
     the city.
330. However, the moment she received the horrible news of King Dahir’s
     death on the battlefield, the Queen and hundreds of other brave Hindu
     women leapt into a great fire and burnt themselves to death. It was the limit
     of warlike spirit, the Kshatriya Dharma! The enemy’s attempts to capture
     and molest the Queen and other women of high-rank were mostly foiled.
331. Even then, in the confusion that was wrought everywhere, Dahir’s
     two daughters named Suryadevi and Pramiladevi fell into the hands of the
     Muslims, who had dashed into the city, killing every captive soldier and
     every citizen. Mohammed Kasim took them and also hundreds of others
     away as courtesans. The looting and massacre of the Hindus and the large-
     scale arson in the city went on unhindered. But that was the fate of not only
     one city, but of every other city or town that the Muslims visited on their
     onward march through Sindh, which met with the same disaster.
     But what were the Buddhists Doing in this National Catastrophe?
332. At the news of the fall of King Dahir and the victory of the Muslims,
     these Buddhists began to ring bells in their vihars to greet the Muslim
     conquerors, and prayed in congregations for the prosperity of the Muslim
     rulers!

333. But what they thus asked for as a boon proved to be an inexorable
     curse for them. After winning the final battle, when the Muslim rushed
     violently, like a stormy wind throughout Sindh, they went on beheading
     these Buddhists even more ruthlessly than they did the Vedic Hindus. For,
     the Vedic Hindus were fighting in groups or individually at every place and
     so they struck at least a little awe and terror in the minds of the Muslims.
     But as there was no armed opposition in Buddhist vihars and Buddhist
     localities, the Muslims cut them down as easily as they would cut
     vegetable. Only those of the Buddhists who took to the Muslim faith were
     spared, while all their vihars throughout Sindh and the innumerale shrines
     in them were knocked down, and hammered to pieces; for the Muslims
     hated these ‘Buddhparastis’—these shrine-worshippers.
334. The very word, “Buddhaparasta”, which found its way into the
     Islamic tongue, is itself a corrupt form of the original Sanskrit word of the
     Buddhists, “Buddhaparsata”. The Muslims began to call the shrine-
     worshippers “Buddhaparashta” because on their way to India, they first
     found such numerous shrines nowhere but in the Buddhist vihars. To
     annihilate such shrine-worshippers was for the Muslims, a sort of religious
     commandment.
     Buddhist Ahimsa and Muslim Himsa
335. This is now the place where the question that we have discussed at
     length in Chapter II (Paras 152 to 159) of this book, about the downfall of
     Buddhism in India should be chronologically concluded. By the year A.D.
     700, of which we are speaking in these pages, that is, before the Muslims
     could set foot in India towards Sindh, the Buddhists all over India were fast
     diminishing in numbers and dwindling into non-existence as is already
     shown in previous chapters. The successful theoretical refutation of the
     Buddhist philosophy and religious tenet by the stalwart Vedic theologians
     and ‘pandits’ is not the only cause of the total extinction of the Buddhists in
     India; many other social and political events also had a fair share in this
     momentous task. Of them only those, which have not received the proper
     attention from the historians so far, or which have not been given enough
     prominence they really deserve, will be conspicuously referred to at their
     proper places in these brief concluding remarks.
     The first cause: the Buddhists’ High Treason
336. We have already dwelt at length on this collective high treason of the
     Buddhists in India against their nation in Ch. II Paras 152 to 159; 182-209,

and Ch. III Paras 242-246 of this book. Because of this treacherous mentality
of the Buddhists, the whole of the patriotic and politically conscious Indian
population was up in arms to destroy them root and branch. Being convinced
beyond doubt by actual experience, that these Buddhist congregations
(Buddhasangha) were inherently anti-national and unpatriotic, and
treacherous institutions, the patriotic politicians and the kingly courts gave
them hardly any support anywhere in India. Especially in the north about the
year A.D. 700 as the new Rajput kingdoms, which were the staunch
supporters of the Vedic religion, began to prosper, the Buddhist population
and the Buddhist cult were rendered helpless, socially boycotted, weak and
invalid everywhere in India.
The Second Reason: Fanatic Buddhist Ahimsa
337. Just as the patriotic and politically conscious population of India
became impatient with the Buddhist cult, so was the general populace
disgusted with the harassment of Buddhist ahimsa. At times—though few
and far between—when the Buddhists gained the greatest political power
over the major portion of India as in the times of Ashoka and Shree Harsha,
they enforced the Buddhist tenets on the Vedic Hindus by misusing their
political authority. The writings of the times are replete with copious
references to, and illustrations of, the religious persecution carried on by the
Buddhists on those occassions. Yet, if passages are quoted from some Vedic
books, some over-sensitive soul might doubt their veracity as they occur
from an opponent’s mouth. Hence, we are adducing a specimen, to show
clearly how vehemently the foreign and non-Vedic historians have criticized
it. Vincent Smith in his ‘Early History of India’ has this to say—
338. “It is recorded by contemporary testimony that in the seventh
century, King Harsha, who obviously aimed at copying closely the
institutions of Ashoka, did not shrink from inflicting capital punishment
without hope of pardon on any person, who dared to infringe his commands
by slaying any animal or using flesh as food, in any part of his dominion.
Kumar Pal, a Jain King of Gujarat, imposed savage penalties upon violators
of his (similar) rules. An unlucky merchant who had committed the
atrocious crime of cracking a louse, was brought before a special court at
Anilhawada and punished with the confiscation of his whole property.
Another wretch, who had outraged the sanctity of the capital by bringing a
dish of raw meat, was put to death. The special court constituted by Kumar
Pal (for this purpose), had functions similar to those of Ashoka’s censors.

And the working of the latter institution sheds light on the unrecorded
proceedings of the earlier ones.”
The Martyr Louse!
339. Out of the proceeds obtained by selling the confiscated property of
the offender, who committed the ‘atrocious crime’ of cracking the said
louse, was built a big temple worth lacs of rupees and it was named
‘Yukvihar’—the Temple of Louse!
340. Had this incident been decribed by any other writer, it would have
been a parody of the Jain faith. But it is the Jain writers themselves, who
cite it with evident pride. Hence, it has to be taken as true.
341. What a paradoxical practice! In order to save a louse in the hair of a
man, to cut off the very head of that man! And this is called ‘ahimsa’! As if
to kill a man is no ‘himsa’—violence! Man seems to have no life at all! It is
because of this ‘ahimsa’, more ruthless and more violent than violence
—‘himsa’—itself, that millions of Indian hunters, fishermen, seamen,
gamekeepers, foresters and others, who lived by hunting and fishing lost
their professions.
342. When these millions of flesh-eaters jointly protested and
demonstrated how they and their wives and children would starve to death
and how this would spell violence of an enormously grave nature, King
Kumar Pal of Gujarat most graciously issued another order that these
millions of people, who have been carrying on violent professions, ought to
leave those professions themselves. However, as per their demand, the state
was to subsidize them for three years.
343. But what after those three years! Starvation could not be completely
ruled out in the case of these unfortunate millions. For, flesh and meat was
their chief food, which could be had almost for nothing. But because this
intolerant ‘ahimsa’ made flesh-eating punishable by death, this common
mass of people was antagonized to the Buddhist faith. These millions of
people shook off its tyrannical yoke, and sought refuge in the Vedic
religion, which had now taken an all-embracing noble form, accepting a
relatively considerate ahimsa, which allowed concessions for particular
time and place and persons, concentrating mainly on human welfare!
Untouchability Aggravated by the Buddhist Religion
344. Even today, not only common people and good many propagandists,
but even historians seem to be labouring under the delusion that the
Buddhists did not recognize the principle of untouchability, and that no one

was considered untouchable in the Buddhist regime. What is laid down in
someone’s religious texts is beside the point. What the actual practice was,
is the most pertinent thing. One unavoidable result of the violent way in
which the Buddhists tried to establish the principle of ahimsa, and of their
declaring animal-hunting and flesh-eating punishable by death, of their
over-enthusiastic and relentless efforts to search out such offender and give
the harshest capital and other severe punishments, was that the practice of
untouchability instead of being wiped out, became still more firmly rooted,
widespread and most distressing. The limited space at our disposal
prevents any further discussion of it in these pages, and, of course, it is
needless! An unimpeachable proof can be found, not in the Vedic, nor in
the Buddhist texts of the times, but in the account of the foreign, Chinese
travellers who had espoused Buddhism and who had travelled all over
India. They avow, “Whichever caste or community—as for example the
‘Chandals’—did not give up the violent professions and did not observe
ahimsa, according to the Buddha faith, were banished from the town as
untouchables; they had to form colonies of their own outside the towns and
cities, like those of the lepers. If at all they had an occassion and were
permitted to come to the town on some market-day, these untouchables had
to carry in one hand a stick, to the end of which was tied a child’s rattle or
a small drum, which they had to beat while going along the road, so that
the people in the streets might see them and avoid every possible contact
with them.”
345. Those, who ignorantly or maliciously blame the Peshwas for the evil
treatment given to the untouchables when they entered the town, should
also criticize, equally vehemently and for the same offence Ashoka, Shree
Harsha and Buddhist kings, and all the Kshatriya kings right from
Vikramaditya to the Rajput rulers, when they see this evidence. For this
evil tradition of untouchability was not begun by the Peshwas, for the first
time, but it had been prevalent even since the Vedic, the Buddhist and the
Jain regimes, and in the Buddhist period, especially, instead of being
weakened, it was most scrupulously and mercilessly observed. Even the
untouchables themselves treated those below their own ranks as equally or
even more untouchable. Those of the untouchables who are still under the
delusion, that the Buddhists gave no quarter to untouchability and so extol
that sect, should do well to remember that the Chandals, the Mahars and
other untouchables were far more miserable under the violently non-violent

Buddhists, than under the Vedic people, who accepted the principle of
ahimsa with its limitations. The Buddhist, once again I would like to
repeat, aggravated and not mitigated ‘untouchability’. They should
examine the validity of this statement in the light of the undisputed
evidence cited here and then alone, should they choose whatever is
beneficial to them.
346. They should remember that for the above reason, the untouchables
like the Chandals and others preferred the Vedic regimes, a more
congenial, to the unrelenting and uncompromising Buddhist ones, and
those thouands of them who in the past had voluntarily (or helplessly and
under pressure) embraced Buddhism, now renounced it and declared their
allegiance to the Vedic religion. Thus, even before the Muslims set foot in
Sindh, followers of the Buddha had begun to diminish in numbers by
millions throughout all ranks of society, right from the highest to the
lowest, and because of its inherent weakness, Buddhism had declined to
such an extent that the Chinese Buddhist travellers, who had seen its sad
plight with their own eyes, had been moved to write that the holy and once
prosperous places like Buddha Gaya, Mrigadava, Shravasti, Kushinagar,
and the birthplace of Lord Buddha, Kapilvastu, which had been sanctified
by the actual residence of the Lord and which had been the place of
pilgrimage for the world-wide Buddhist followers, had been sadly rendered
desolate and were overgrown with wild and thick forests.
347. Nevertheless, this moribund Buddhism was not altogether wiped out
of India, before the advent of the Muslims. The Buddhists were more
numerous in the north-western frontier states like Sindh and Kamboj, and
even in Bengal in the east, than in the rest of India. It is said that the
modern state of Bihar derives its name from the fact that there once existed
far too many Buddhist viharas, stoopas and other ‘Buddhaparasthas’. Since
the Vedic states were prosperous everywhere, this Buddhist sect had no
guts to carry on its traitorous activities or to enforce its religious rites and
faith on non-Buddhists, whether it had their will to do so or not. And so
long as they followed their religious faith harmlessly, they, their
organisations, their institutions, and their viharas were never interfered with
in any way by the Vedic kings. That they enjoyed complete religious
freedom is admitted by the Chinese travellers open-heartedly.
348. What then made these millions of Buddhists, living in the various
states of India before the Muslim onrush, dwindle into non-existence

thereafter?
349. Some time ago, historians, and especially western historians, had a
presumption that sometime in the past, or at frequent intervals, the Vedic
rulers must have massacred these Buddhists and destroyed them root and
branch, or reconverted them to Hinduism forcibly. In order to find some
credence to this theory of theirs, they examined the historical records of the
times most scrupulously. but even after taking into consideration a few
trifling exceptions. they could find no proof to establish any deliberate, pre-
planned, or systematic attempt on the part of the Vedic rulers to annihilate
the Buddhists completely.
349A. At last, the more conscientious of these historians declared
honestly, that this presumption of theirs was totally unfounded and the very
idea of forcible extinction of the Buddhists at the hands of the Vedic people
was basically wrong.
350. Who then was responsible for this total ousting of the Buddhist faith
from India? The historians, foreign as well as native, do not seem to have
found an answer to this pressing question, or they have, at least, preferred to
be silent on this point.
The third cause—Confrontation with Muslims
351 A. We have already briefly described in the foregoing pages how, in
spite of their traitorous solicitations of the Muslims, these
‘Buddhaprasthees’—the idol-worshipping Buddhists who preached extreme
non-violence—were violently exterminated from Sindh by the Muslim
aggressors under Kasim, owing to their innate hatred for that sect. For the
same reason, and in the very same manner, the Muslims went on liquidating
the Buddhist pockets of influence, as they advanced, conquering province-
after-province in India. With a sword in one hand and the Koran in the
other, every Muslim military chief broke down, demolished and razed to the
ground the Buddhist ‘stoopas’, ‘sangharams’, ‘viharas’, the idols of
Buddha, pillars, everything belonging to or relating to the Buddhists. As
most of the Buddhists showed, through fear of death, willingness to
embrace Islam, they were all converted. Not a single Buddhist remained
alive in the northwestern provinces like Gandhar, Kamboj and others;
everyone became a Muslim or was silenced by the victor’s sword. On
seeing Bakhtyar Khilji march on Bihar, several Buddhists took their
religious books and fled to Tibet and China. The rest were polluted and
taken over into the Muslim fold. Some might have preferred dying rather to

being Muslims, but no one fought for life and religion. Nowhere, can one
find evidence to say that some Indian Buddhist army or some Buddhist
organization fought with the Muslim invaders any battle worth the name!
Majority of Muslims in East Bengal explained
352. The same is the case with East Bengal, where the majority of the
population was Buddhist. With some honourable exceptions, the Buddhists
there took to Islam en masse. In Delhi, where the Muslim sultans and
emperors ruled for over five hundred years, the Vedic Hindus have all along
been in a clear majority. The whole of Uttar Pradesh—the northern India—
right upto West Bengal—whether under the Muslim administration or the
British or the present one, the Vedic Hindus—has all along maintained its
numerical superiority. For, even when the Muslims first came conquering,
the Buddhists in these provinces were conspicuously few in number. It is
only in East Bengal that the Hindus fell into minority. How? Quite
obviously! This province had numerically more Buddhists than the Hindus,
and those numerous Buddhists became Muslims! It is natural, therefore,
that this province alone should become, since then, a Muslim-majority
province.
353. Thus, it is the social extinction of the Buddhists in India, which came
to pass all of a sudden, which was the inevitable effect of the armed and
ruthless might of the Muslim conquerors. The relentless and
uncompromising Buddhist ahimsa was done to death by the equally
relentless and bigoted Muslim violence!
354. But what happened to the Buddhist cult and Lord Buddha himself in
India in the end? Just as a stream separated from the River Bhagirathi,
should flow separately some miles away and once again should leap as a
tributary into the same Bhagirathi, the Buddhist cult, born out of the Vedic
Hinduism, merged in the end in the same Hindu religion; and Lord Buddha
himself was established as the tenth of the Godly Avatars and was
Hinduized.
The Neglected 300 years of Hindu Valour
355-356. In most of the ‘Histories of India’, by foreign as well as by our
own writers, and especially in the textbooks of history for Indian schools,
the Muslim invasions of India follow so thickly the one of Sindh in A.D.
711 by Mohammed Kasim, and the accounts of the subjugation of province-
after-province of India are narrated so hastily, as in one breath, and the
whole account is so cursorily given in a limited space of 20 or 25 pages,

that a common reader or a small pupil is quite likely to think that the
Hindus offered practically no resistance worth the name, that the Muslims
were never halted in their advance. After the conquest of Sindh, the Muslim
victor mounted, as it were, a magic horse and went on conquering the whole
of India and never, till they reached Kanyakumari, did they alight from it.
This is obviously childish!
The Intervening Period
357. To avoid this misconception and to nullify the injustice done to the
Hindu nations, a true historian, whose avowed duty is to tell the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth, should effectively and
proportionately, describe the intervals between any two Muslim invasions
and the heroic resistance, successful or otherwise, offered by the Hindus.
After the fall of Sindh in A.D. 711, Hindu kings most effectively checked
the Muslim advance outside Sindh for more or less 300 years. But this
Hindu heroism quite easily escapes the notice of the common reader,
because in almost all the textbooks of Indian History, it is not so
impressively mentioned.
358. It is because we utter the words ‘three hundred years’ or three
centuries within three seconds, that the enormous length of this intervening
period quite escapes our notice, unless we are expressly told about it. We
should, therefore, measure the period in question by generations of people.
Five generations make up 300 years! The British rule over India, for
instance, seems too lengthy to the present generation. But measured in
centuries, it lasted only for one and a half. Compared with it, the Hindu
valour in arresting the Muslim onslaught within the confines of Sindh for
more or less 300 years, assumes a greater historical significance. The same
holds good with regard to the other intervening periods.
359. One cannot say justifiably that the Muslim vigour or their ambition to
conquer the world was on the wane. On the contrary, these both were at
their full height during this period. During this very period of three hundred
years, these very Arabs had overrun and vanquished nation-after-nation,
right from Baghdad to the Mediterranean Sea and thence along the north
African coast straight to Gilbralter, whence they subjugated Portugal and
Spain and knocked at the gates of southern France. The name Gibralter
itself testifies to the unrivalled Muslim conquest of the West Jebal-Tarik,
which means the straits conquered by the Muslim Commander Tarik, which
is the root of the modern corrupt form ‘Gilbralter’.

359A. At last in A.D. 732, the valiant King of France, Charles Martel,
gave a mortal blow to the Muslim aggression and repelled them for ever. It
is this monumental triumph of Charles Martel, that saved the whole of
Europe! In their triumphant march, the Muslims not only subdued the
kingdoms in Western Asia and Northern Africa politically, but with the
sharp edge of their sword, they also forced them all to embrace Islam. Even
Portugal and Spain were forcibly converted to Islamic faith. Their
womenfolk, too, were abducted and violently defiled. But both these nations
freed themselves from the Muslim yoke some centuries afterwards. How
they did so will be described a little later. Still the fact remains that the
nations on the north coast of Africa are even today Muslims.
360. Well, it is not that during the years A.D. 700 to 1000 the Muslims did
not try to march out of Sindh and attack the neighbouring Hindu States with
the same devilish bigotry. They did try to force themselves on through
Sourashtra and Gandhar many times. But every time, they were routed by
the Hindus.
361. At that time from the eastern boundary of Sindh to the northern most
boundary of north India, there was an unbroken chain of valiant Rajput
Rajas which, like a mountain range, very difficult, though not quite
impossible to cross, kept on resisting stoutly the Muslim onslaught.
Consequently, in Sourashtra and in the north-west provinces, the attacking
Muslim armies were put to rout again and again, by the staunch resistance
of the Hindus. On the other hand, the mighty Bapa Raval of Chittod once
attacked Sindh and after driving the Muslims clean out, annexed it to his
own Kingdom. The Arabs did, no doubt, capture it once again, but
ultimately, the Sumra Rajputs firmly established their rule over Sindh.
362. If the fanatic Arabs could trample under the horses’ hoofs, the whole
northern coast of Africa and two major nations of Europe, why could they
not force their way out of Sindh? Thus, put in sharp contrast with
contemporary history of the west, the heroism of the Hindus shines out all
the more clearly and brightly.
363. Why couldn’t another Chandragupta Maurya or a Vikramaditya
channel out the whole of the Indian might, and drive the Arabian Muslims
back right into the heart of Arabia, is a fact that disturbs us not a little.
❑

The Peculiar Nature of the Muslim
Atrocities [Sultans of Ghazni]
364. During the long period of nearly three hundred years, in which the
Arab menace was being successfully hemmed in Sindh, and was finally
overthrown by the Sumra Rajputs, different Muslim tribes were busy
founding a strong Muslim power in Ghazni, further north of Gandhar. A
Sultan of Ghazni, Sabakhtageen, was now preparing himself fully to attack
his contemporary Brahmin king, Jaipal, whose forefathers had all along
been ruling the whole of Punjab and Gandhar right up to the Hindukush,
ever since the rout of the Huns.
365. Shrewdly anticipating the plan of Sabakhtageen to invade India,
Jaipal himself attacked Ghazni, but unfortunately he was repelled,
Encouraged by this success, Sabakhtageen boldly fell upon Jaipal, a few
years afterwards, with a large army. In order to meet this fierce aggression
more determinedly, King Jaipal formed a powerful alliance with the
neighbouring Hindu princes, but he was again defeated and the whole
region beyond the Indus river, including Gandhar, was lost to the Muslim
invader. Soon afterwards, Sultan Sabakhtageen died and was succeeded by
his son, Mohammed, a hundred times more fanatical and more crueller than
his father, and an arch-enemy of the Hindus. This was the same Mahmud of
Ghazni, who styled himself ‘Butshikan’, the Idol-breaker or ‘Iconoclast’. At
his accession to the throne of Ghazni, he had vowed in the presence of the
highest religious and temporal Muslim authority, the Grand Khalipha, that
he would wipe out the Kafir Hindus from India and in order to keep his
word, he soon began a series of expeditions beyond the Indus.
366. It is from now onwards—i.e. about A.D. 1000—that the really great
wars between the Hindus and the Muslims were to be fought for centuries
together.
367. If the Muslim soldiers had gained great confidence, having twice
defeated the Hindu forces under Jaipal, King Jaipal and his soldiers, without
being disheartened and downcast even after suffering two defeats, speeded
up their preparation for a still more determined stand against the Muslims.
But fortune once again frowned upon the Hindu King. And when,
notwithstanding all his valour and all his efforts to save his religion and his

nation, he was again defeated in 1001 by Mahmud of Ghazni, Jaipal
preferred entrusting the kingdom to his son, Anangpal, and burning himself
to death in a great pyre, to a disgraceful life and a meek surrender to the
enemy.
368. King Anangpal, too, carried on his father’s arduous task of staunchly
opposing the Muslim aggression. In A.D. 1006, Mahmud demanded
passage through Anangpal’s territory in order to invade Multan; but
Anangpal refused to give any, whereupon the Muslim aggressor marched on
Anangpal and defeated him. Anangpal had to retreat and when Mahmud
went ahead to Multan, Anangpal again organized a united Hindu stand for
protecting the Hindu religion. Once again, the Hindu-Muslim armies met in
the vicinity of the Indus, in A.D. 1008, when the Hindus fought so furiously
that in the afternoon, the Muslim formation was broken through and there
was confusion in the Muslim ranks. Even Sultan Mahmud had prepared to
leave the battlefield to make a retreat, when all of a sudden, Anangpal’s
elephant, scared by the shower of burning arrows, turned round and started
running amuck. This was the most unfortunate thing, which had very often
brought about the Hindu collapse, but no sufficient precaution was ever
taken to prevent it. A great havoc was wrought by this retreating elephant
among the Hindu ranks. Mahmud was quick enough to seize the
opportunity of this decisive turn of the battle and reorganizing the choicest
of his scattered soldiers, he once again fell upon the bewildered Hindu army
and in a deadly struggle defeated it. But the Muslim army was no less
worsted; so instead of pursuing Anangpal, Mahmud satisfied himself with
the success he got and returned to Ghazni. But as it became quite clear to
him that unless and until Anangpal was humbled completely, no Muslim
power could be established in Punjab, he assailed the latter for the third
time.
This time unfortunately, Anangpal had nobody to help him. Yet he went to
war with the remnant of his loyal army and, as a brave King that he was, he
died in the thick of the fray.
369. Thus, King Jaipal and his son Anangpal and thousands of their brave
soldiers boldly faced, and fought against the early ferocious Muslim
onslaughts in Punjab and laid down their lives for the protection of the
Hindu state and the Hindu religion. They did their sacred duty of arresting
the enemy thrust.

370. Soon after the death of Anangpal, Mahmud annexed Punjab to his
     kingdom of Ghazni, as he had formerly done with the north-west frontier
     province. Sultan Mahmud then marched on Thaneshwar and Mathura, the
     most renowned of the holy places of the Hindus; and after demolishing and
     burning as many of the Hindu temples, and killing as many of the Hindu
     male population as possible, and violating the chastity of hundreds of Hindu
     women and abducting them, Mahmud, like a ferocious wolf returned to his
     den, Ghazni. He also took with him immeasurable booty of gold and
     jewellery. In A.D. 1019, he pounced on the Pratihari capital of Kanouj and
     destroyed it in the same brutal fashion. The result was that the surrounding
     Hindu population took such a fearful fright for him, that when in A.D.
     1023, he once again paid his sinister visit to Gwalior and Kalinjar, the
     princes there helplessly and meekly accepted his overlordship.
     His Dash on Somnath
371. Next, when in A.D. 1026, Sultan Mahmud assailed the famous
     temple of Somnath in Sourashtra, he did it with such a huge army and with
     such terrible vows and declarations that Raja Bheem of Sourashtra and
     Gujarat fled away, leaving the kingdom exposed to every sort of humiliation
     and destruction at the hands of this appalling enemy, tainting his own name
     of Bheem with everlasting shame. Naturally, the Hindus had no army left,
     sufficiently well-equipped and well-organized to face this formidable
     Muslim assault. Nevertheless, even at this critical time, the priests of the
     Temple of Somnath offered to shoulder the responsibility of protecting the
     sacred temple as best as they could. They called upon the surrounding
     Hindu population to run to their aid in the sacred cause of defending the
     temple and their religion, and thousands of Hindus from far-off regions
     also, answered their call and ran to the rescue of the Temple of Somnath.
     The battle was to be fought not for any ruler or king; no Hindu soldier was
     to profit by it individually. It was a crusade, pure and simple. Moreover,
     these thousands of Hindu soldiers were not a trained and well-formed army.
     It was a conglomeration of Hindu crusaders that was collected at the
     eleventh hour. Even then, they fought ferociously and desperately for the
     sacred cause without intermission or relaxation, by day and even by night,
     with the well-organized and stalwart Muslim soldiers! While the Muslim
     army climbed right upto the ramparts and barricades over the high walls of
     the temple, and even after it forced itself into the very temple, the toughest
     of Hindu resistance continued unmitigated. Muslim blood, too, was shed

profusely. Not before did Sultan Mahmud completely put down all
resistance, could he ever force his way right into the innermost chamber of
the temple and break the idol of Somnath with his own hands. In order to
celebrate this fanatical act, he took for himself the title, ‘Butshikan’ —
Iconoclast!
Martyrdom of fifty thousand brave Hindu Soldiers
372. Even Muslim historians write that at least fifty thousand Hindus fell
fighting in the defence of their temple. Had someone of these fifty thousand
Hindus said, “I am willing to be a Muslim”, he would have been spared by
the Muslims, because it was one of their tactics in the religious war. But
scorning such a base and defiled life, the Hindu volunteer force courted
martyrdom; not one, not even a thousand, but fifty thousand of them
sacrificed their precious lives on the altar of this holy battle!
373. While eulogizing an ancient Roman hero, Horatius, who fought with
the enemy on a similar occasion, an English poet writes:
Thus outspake brave Horatius
the Captain of the gate,
“To every man upon this earth
death cometh soon or late,
And how can a man die better than
by facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers and
the temple of his Gods?”
374. Which Hindu will be reluctant to shed his grateful tears for these fifty
thousand martyrs, who died defending their religion and temples with the
same fervour as is expressed in this verse?
375. But the most disgusting fact is that while narrating this invasion of
Mahmud on Somnath, not only the foreign historians but many Hindu
historians, ungrateful as they too are, have mocked at the simple faith of the
priesthood and other Hindu population of the place, and have not uttered a
single word in praise of those Hindu warriors who made such a huge
sacrifice, ‘facing fearful odds, for the temple of their Gods’! If the
wiseacres are not wise enough to appraise the jewels properly, can it be said
that the fault lies with those jewels?
376. Even if it be neccesary to condemn the blind faith of those Hindus, yet
those who do so, should also remember that, albeit blind, the Hindu belief in
the mysterious divine power of their Gods was not a diabolic, fanatic,

bloodthirsty religiosity like that of the Muslims, who attacked religious
places of others with deadly weapons of war, slew the innocent men and
women, young and old, forced them to embrace Islam at the point of the
sword, and ran frantically, causing death and destruction everywhere. But
such a statement born of boldness cannot be expected of these immature
childish and cowardly writers! If the Muslim writers of ‘Tarikhs’ and the
Mullah-Moulvis boast that the Hindu Gods were not the true Gods because
they did not prevent the Muslim warlords from breaking idols and
demolishing temples, and that theirs was the only true religion, they should
be enlightened that the arch heretic Changizkhan and his deputies not only
desecrated the very city of the Muslim-Khalipha, but ravaged it, killed the
Khalipha, burned several masjids, turned others into stables for their horses,
reduced the Bible to ashes and trampled the Koran under their horses’ hoofs!
The Muslim Allah could not stop the ravaging hands of Changizkhan!
Hundreds of such instances can be cited. Are the Muslims ready to grant, on
this account, the imbecility and falsehood of their Allah? Even when Shivaji
slew the ‘Butshikan’—idol-breaker—Afzalkhan, and offered his ‘goat like
head with thirty-two teeth’, as a sacrificial offering to the Goddess Bhavani
of Tulzapur, his hands were not staved off from doing so by the Muslim
Allah!
377. After demolishing the temple of Somnath and loading the camels
with the immense wealth, looted from it, when Mahmud set out for Ghazni,
he learnt that instead of being cowed down into submission because of his
wholesale destruction of the temple at Somnath, the Hindu population was
even more enraged, and that the King of Malava with his large army was
preparing to block his way back to Ghazni and had already entered the
battlefield. As Mahmud was not prepared to risk this new battle, he took an
unexpected and difficult route through the sandy deserts of Sindh,
abandoning the usual way through Malava. While crossing the deserts of
Sindh and Baluchistan, his army had to face many dangers and unspeakable
misery. Hardly within three or four years of reaching Ghazni, he died in
A.D. 1030.
378. This fanatic but brave Sultan of Ghazni undertook at least fifteen
major expeditions to India. Hindus too fought furiously on the battlefield
every time. But no Hindu king could defeat him. But these invasions of
Mahmud and his political conquests did not so much harm the Hindus, as did
the forcible conversion of millions of Hindus in North-West Frontier

Province and Punjab. That the Kingdoms, which were lost to the Muslims,
were reconquered by the Hindus sooner or later, is plain history. But the
Hindus could never bring back the millions of Hindus who were converted to
Islam willy-nilly. We could free from the foreign yoke our geographical
regions, but the enormous numerical loss of population could never be made
up by the Hindu nation.
Change of Religion means Change of Nationality
379. We are now going to discuss at some length some of the religious
concepts of the Hindus of those times; of the course of conduct and
practices that were considered decent and in conformity with the religious
laws of the Hindus of those times, and those that were declared to be
against them; and particularly those that deeply concerned the large-scale
forcible defilement and conversion of the Hindus that took place during the
Hindu-Muslim war. It can be very briefly said here that if the millions of
forcibly converted Hindus have remained Muslims even to this day, it is
because of the perverse religious concepts of the Hindus of those times,
which ultimately proved highly detrimental to the best interests of the
Hindu community, viz.—caste-system, the fantastic ideas of pollution, the
extravagant ideas of religious tolerance and many other silly notions. Why,
these Hindu converts went on increasing enormously generation-after-
generation and, as the later generations were born and brought up under the
Muslim influence, they began to be more-and-more fanatical—so bitterly
fanatical that they formed an appreciable part of the armies of the Iranian,
Turkish, Mongol and other foreign Muslim invaders and, with equal hatred
and bitterness, they attacked the Hindu Kafirs with a view to destroying
them completely or force them to change their own religion and embrace
Islam. One out of hundreds of such facts can be cited here to bear out the
above remarks. A Hindu tribe, named Ghuri which lived, during the period
under discussion, beyond the Indus and which was forcibly made to change
over to Islam under precisely the same perilous conditions, became later
on, the bitterest enemy of the Hindus. The Hindu-hater, Sultan Mohammed
Ghori, belonged to this very Ghuri tribe. In fact, the majority of the Muslim
populations of Afghanisthan, Pathanisthan (Pakhtoonistan), Baluchistan
were the converted descendants of the original Hindu natives of those
places. But, later on, they did not even have the slightest idea that their
ancestors were, once upon a time, Hindus. On the contrary, they were
enraged at any mention of such descent of theirs and would say: “Bygones

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.

The caste-system based on birth and Parentage and the National
Penalty of Ostracism
383. Much earlier than the Muslim invasions of India, i.e. just after the
Hindus conquered the Huns completely, hundreds of Hindu leaders tried on
all sides all over India to restore political, religious and social stability in
the society and the nation. The Hindu leadership of the time naturally
devolved on them rising warrior class of the Rajput royalty, who were
staunch devotees of the Vedic Hindu religion. In this very attempt at
reconstruction, the vast Hindu community was being moulded with
meticulous care into the framework of the parentage-dominated caste
system. Slowly but surely, this caste system became an inherent and
essential feature of Hinduism. Not only in the four former classes (वर्ण),
but in more or less four thousand castes, born out of those four classes and
many other accidental sources, sanctioned by the religious law, was the
whole Hindu community everlastingly and almost unanimously divided
internally. In a sense, the social transition of the Hindu nation was
occosioned by the historical neccesity of the time.
384. The main principle underlying this caste-system was this: Only he
who was born in a particular caste, could remain in it. To have food or to
drink even water with or from one of another caste was considered liable
for penalty. Is it any wonder then that the inter-caste marriages of boys and
girls were strictly prohibited? To these very religious practices of the time,
we have ascribed, in our various articles on the caste-system, the names
‘Lotabandi (prohibition of drinking water), Rotibandi (prohibition of food),
Betibandi (prevention of inter-caste marriages), Sparshbandi
(untouchability) and the ones that we are going to discuss hereafter viz.,
Shuddhibandi (prevention of purification of religious converts),
Sindhubandi (ban on sea voyage) etc. These seven ‘bandis’—or bans—
which arrested not only the progress of the Hindus but also impaired their
normal way of life were, in fact, seven fetters. These fetters were not
forcibly fastened to the feet of the Hindu nation by any Muslim, Christian
or other foreign power; they were so fastened by the Hindus themselves, in
their extreme anxiety for the protection of their religion. That is why we
have been calling them through spoken as well as written words not foreign
shackles, but as ‘seven native fetters’.
385. It is not necessary here in this book to discuss fully the caste-system
of the Hindus, nor is this the place for it. Those desirous of getting

themselves acquainted with our thoughts on this subject may profitably read
the book, “Janmajat Jatyutchhedak Nibandha” (The Eradication of the
Parentage-dominated Caste-system). Here, while describing the religious
aggression of our foreign enemies, we shall discuss it only so far as it is
absolutely necessary to do so.
386. First of all, it should not be forgotten that this caste-system must have
facilitated the stupendous consolidation and remarkable stability of the
Hindu Society under certain peculiar circumstances and in particular
contexts. In evaluating it, it would be ungrateful only to point to the
eventual harm that it has caused in its later stages.
387. It must also be admitted that the Hindus of those times created, or
voluntarily allowed to be created, this caste-system with the sole object of
protecting their racial seed and blood, preserving their caste-life and
tradition, and keeping them absolutely pure from any contamination.
388. The structure of the caste-system was based on the principles of
heredity, of the economy based on the division of labour, of social co-
existence and of social ethics, so far as these principles were comprehended
by the writers of different ‘Smritis’. Thousands of years have rolled by, the
Hindu nation has faced innumerable calamities and catastrophes, yet the
hold of the caste-system and the influence that it has wielded upon billions
and billions of Hindus throughout these tens of centuries, could never have
been possible, if the roots of this birth-dominated caste-system had not gone
deeper into the very foundation of this colossal edifice of the Hindu society.
The Hindu faith—that the religious duties prescribed for the particular
castes and sub-castes like Pariyas, Bhangis, Kolis, Bhils were the pious
ways of attaining their earthly welfare, and heavenly bliss and Godly grace
for them—would never have otherwise remained so steadfast through all
these perilous centuries, if the lifeblood, which ran through the veins of the
Hindu Society, apparently most heterogenous and miserably disorganised,
had not animated its diversified elements with some undying and unifying
force with a certain conciousness of its true self.
388A. This powerful unifying national sentiment which so unmistakably
held together these different and apparently autonomous elements of the
Hindu society and fused them together was HINDUTWA! AND HINDU
DHARMA.
389. What we should like to call today the seven native shackles, viz.
Untouchability (स्पर्शबंदी) ban on dining together of the people belonging