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

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

to different castes (रोटीबंदी), ban on inter-caste marriages (बेटीबंदी),
and so on), did never appear to be shackles or fetters to the Hindus of those
times, when the Muslims had begun invading India. To them, they were but
the charmed amulets or protecting bands! Every caste, whether of the
Brahmins or of the sweepers, was immensely proud of its separate entity.
390. These various castes and sub-castes of the Hindus punished even the
slightest violation of the caste-laws with social ostracism—even if such a
violation of caste-law was voluntary or involuntary, knowingly or
unknowingly!
391. Today, we are apt to take this social ostracism quite lightly, but at the
time of Muslim aggressions and thereafter, the very mention of such social
ostracism would have unfailingly shocked to death every Hindu—whether
he was a prince or a pauper—to be cut off from one’s own caste, was to be
cut off from the whole world and from life itself. So severe was this
punishment of social boycott that the unfortunate person at once lost his
parents and brothers, his kith and kin—the people of his own flesh and
blood—and was thrown into abysmal gloom. It should be sufficient to say
here briefly that this social ostracism was far more dreaded than any
physical torture or a heavy fine involving any financial loss or even death.
Consequently, the tendency to observe scrupulously, and in strict
conformity with the prevalent social practices, the traditional caste-laws,
sanctioned by the sacred religious books and the writers of the various
Smritis, was ingrained into the very texture of the Hindu society for
generations together.
392. Although we can gratefully cite many other things regarding the
caste-system that brought about cohesiveness of the diversified Hindu
society and had lasting effects on it, it would be equally ungrateful on our
part if we desist from criticising with sufficient severity, the unlimited harm
done by this caste-system and the irrational and obstinate pride that the
Hindus took in it, when the Muslims began to knock at their doors.
393. As a means of beating down the religious aggression of the Muslims,
this counter-stroke of the Hindu caste system proved to be most ineffectual
and useless like a blunted sword. On the contrary, these very caste-laws and
the strict adherence to them brought about a series of disasters on the Hindu
religion and the Hindu nation, making the conversion of the millions of
Hindus far too easier for the Muslims than can be imagined, while it cannot

be denied that they made the conversion of the Muslims to Hinduism,
absolutely impossible.
394. Before they came to India, the Arabians and other Muslims forced
the millions of Christian, Jewish and Persian populations of Iran, Turan, the
kingdoms of the middle Asia and Africa, right from Egypt to Spain, to give
up their own religious faiths and accept Islam at the point of the sword. But
these various European and Afro-Asian people never for a moment thought
themelves to be polluted, nor that their own original religion was lost to
them, simply because they took food or drink with the Muslims. The
Muslim rulers had to keep their swords constantly hanging over their heads
to enforce their allegiance to Islam, and to ensure from them the strict
observance of the Muslim religious rites and duties, for centuries together.
If, by chance, the Muslim power at any place was uprooted and completely
effaced, the forcibly converted Christians or Persians and others went over
to their original religions en masse, throwing away to the winds the green
Muslim shred of a flag and proudly fluttering their own in its stead. As
such, it was very difficult for even the Muslim powers there to keep these
unwilling converts tied to the Islamic faith, the Muslim armed soldiers had
to keep a vigilant eye on these foreign converts and to see every time if
their faith in Islam was shaken even a bit or whether they did not foment
any agitation to go back to their own religion.
395-396. On the contrary, in Spain, Greece, Serbia and other countries,
where the Muslims in their turn were forced to forsake Islam and court
Christianity on pain of death, the Christian rulers there had to keep a similar
strict watch on these Muslim converts. For the Muslims, too, never thought
that they were anyway defiled because of any food they ate from the
Christians or because they had marital or extramarital relations with them.
These forcibly converted Muslims were on the alert, to see if the ruling
power became weak at any place and immediately revolted, hoisting any
green cloth that they could catch hold of as their flag and re-entered the
Muslim fold. They would even compel, if possible, the Christians
themselves to accept Islam, and thus avenge the wrong done to them. This
experience elsewhere made the early Arabian and other Muslim invaders of
India fear at least for a century or two, that they would be obliged to use
military force alone to keep the newly converted Hindus tied down to the
Islamic faith.

397-398. But when they invaded Sindh and forced conversion to the
Islamic faith on the people there, these Muslim invaders came to realize
soon enough that although the Hindus' pride for their religion and their
loyalty to it was no less ardent than that of any other people, and that at
times, it was far more fervent and irrepresible than that of all of them—
why, for this very reason—it was very easy for the Muslims and others to
enforce physical conversion on the Hindus, if, however, mental conversion
was far too difficult.
399. This did not merely pertain to the time when the Muslims invaded
India. Even before the rise of Islam, the Syrian Christians, who were very
generously—in other words suicidally—given shelter by the Hindu kings in
the Malabar, and who began to proselytize the Hindu community, also came
to know very soon that it was quite possible to desecrate a whole village of
caste Hindus by merely thrusting a morsel of grub into their mouths or by
just throwing crumbs of half-eaten loaves of bread or biscuits or slices of
beef or the meat of cows into wells and tanks, where people went to have
drinking water; and that no one of them had any place in the Hindu
community any longer.
400. Later on, when in the 15th and the 16th centuries, the European
armies of the Portuguese and others rushed into India by the sea-routes,
they, too, were pleased to find the above-mentioned superstitions of
contamination and the absurd religiosity of the Hindus, and were fired with
an evil ambition to proselytize the whole of India with no difficulty at all.
Fetters for the Miserable Hindu Proselytes
401-402. The Hindu armoury has all along been full of invincible
weapons to beat back the political aggressions of the foreigners, and they
had successfully crushed down such attempts on various occasions. But it
had, at least in those times, no weapon to fight back this religious
aggression. So the Indians had to rely on this sole weapon of social boycott,
while facing this uprecedented Muslim religious aggression of polluting and
converting the Hindus. They went on relentlessly with their policy of
completely ostracizing every proselyte Hindu, according to the custom of
those days. The then Hindu Society had kept no way open to purify a
convert by some form of atonement for the sin of contamination and
conversion. Although, by the time of the Muslim advance up to Punjab, the
number of Hindu converts to Islam had already mounted to hundreds of
thousands and although many of them earnestly wished to come back to

Hinduism, this social ostracism of the converts was so very persistent with
the ban on eating food from persons of another caste, the ban on inter-caste
marital relations and the others, that it was at once accepted by the leaders
of the Hindu Society without any thought about the consequences.
Naturally, this ban on the repurification and adoption of the converts back to
Hinduism, also automatically grew into a new fetter and instead of checking
the foreign religious aggression, it hampered the progress of Hinduism
itself.
Ban of Ostracism and self-seeking Converts
403. Well, it would have been quite proper and necessary to ostracize
those opportunists among the Hindus, who had taken to Islam for their
selfish ends, for power, or for avenging their private grudge against their
own fellow men; for they had willingly severed all connections with the
Hindu people, and no good could be served by readmitting these sinful
people into the Hindu Society. But what, if they should later on, sincerely
repent for this sinful act of theirs! This irrevocable ban did immeasurable
wrong to those unfortunate tens and hundreds of thousands who, fearing
social boycott, would never have dreamt of going over to Islam but who
were absolutely unable and helpless to face the atrocities of the Muslim
onslaught. For these miserable and forlorn thousands and for their
offsprings, at least, there should have been some hope of redemption!
404. Again, the self-seeking opportunists, who willingly went over to
Islam were much too limited in number. Precisely for this very reason, it
seems extremely tragic that this punitive measure of ostracism fell like a
bolt from the blue on the helpless victims of the avalanche-like Muslim
religious aggression, doing not the least harm to the real perpetrators of the
crime. As it were, it was insult added to injury. They were already
wriggling with excruciating agony at the loss of their religion and were
even prepared to court death by way of atonement and yet, they were
irretrievably condemned to permanent damnation, were never again to be
received by their own parents, their husbands and sons and all their
relatives, as their own. The very flesh of their flesh and the blood of their
blood were now complete strangers to them, at least in this world!
A Strange Justice
405. While thus mercilessly penalising these innocent victims, the Hindus
could not only do no harm to the malevolent and atrocious Muslim invaders

with their counter-stroke of ostracism, but, on the contrary, helped them
directly and enormously in their work of proselytization!
406-407. Unlike the armed vigilance that was necessary for hundreds of
years to keep the converted Christians, Jews and other peoples of the west,
tied down to the Muslim faith, the work of proselytization in India
necessitated a day's labour for the Muslims. If once at the time of a battle,
or an armed aggression on cities and villages, they took the trouble of
defiling thousands of men and women either by food, drink or rape or mere
association, the responsibility of keeping them in the Muslim fold for
generations together was shouldered by the Hindus, as if it was a religious
duty of their own! Thus worked the punitive measure of ostracism, serving
the best interests of the enemy, whom it sought to counteract.
408. But the conversion of one Hindu to the Islamic faith meant the
transformation of a man into a demon, the metamorphosis of a God into a
Satan! This was the unpleasant reality of the cataclysmal Hindu-Muslim
wars! How this demonization of the Hindus took place, is briefly shown in
paragraphs 379 and 380.
409. Even then, the Hindu society turned a deaf ear and blind eye to this
reality! To speak broadly, it can be safely said, that the Muslims had never
to worry about the converts ever going back to their own religion, for they
were convinced that the Hindus would never accept them!
410. The Hindus could never clearly distinguish the change of caste from
the change of religion.
411. For instance, if a Vaishya had an illicit exchange of food or
matrimonial relations with one of a lower Hindu caste, say a Shimpi (a
tailor), a Bhandari (a brewer), or someone else, he was excommunicated
from his caste. Similarly, if a Hindu had perforce to take food, or drink
water with a sinful (in their opinion) non-Hindu or if he or his wife was
defiled or raped, and so had to live with the Muslims, he was banished not
only by his own caste but even by the lowliest caste of the Hindus. It means
the casting out of a Hindu from one caste, for having the so-called illicit
relations with another, was considered on a par with the casting out of
another from the whole of the Hindu society for similar reason! The
fundamental national difference between the two, which in the long run was
to affect, adversely and horribly, the numerical superiority of the Hindus,
altogether escaped their notice.

412. An exile from any one caste of the Hindus never lost his Hindu
     society nor his Hindu religion; he could merge in any one of the many other
     Hindu castes or could form a new caste of similar outcastes. But this new
     caste of such outcastes formed an integral part of the Hindu society. There
     was a change of caste but never a change of religion—nor even a change of
     society. Why then speak of a change of nationality? The above-mentioned
     Vaishya, for instance, lost his Vaishya caste, but his being a Hindu remained
     unimpaired. Naturally, this sort of banishment from one caste to the other in
     the Hindu society, never caused any numerical loss to it.
413. Only one extract from the many ‘Tavarikhs’ (histories) written by
     various Muslim writers should serve as a sample to show how miserable the
     Hindu converts were!
     415-417. Of the hundreds of Hindus taken as slaves and sent to Persia,
     Turan (Turkey) and Arabia, at the time of the invasions of Mahmud Ghazni,
     some could give the slip, individually or in groups, and would run away to
     Punjab, which because of the staunch Hindu resistance, remained the
     extreme limit of Muslim domination for over a century or so after Mahmud
     Ghazni. Thereafter, these runaway Hindu converts would escape even from
     Punjab and enter the neighbouring Hindu states of Rajputana for shelter,
     and were glad at heart that they were at last free from the Muslim clutches
     and that they would live happily in Hindu families, in their own temples
     and in their own society!
414. But when, according to the same custom, a Hindu, banished because
     of some sort of (so-called) illicit contact with any Muslim, would cease to
     be a Hindu altogether, and as thousands of such Hindu men and women
     were, often enough being converted under coercion by the Muslim
     aggressors, and as they were all without any exception, thrown out of the
     Hindu society, it was the Hindu society that suffered huge numerical losses
     year after year!
415. But alas! they were grossly disappointed because of the ban on
     reconversion and rehabilitation of these caste-outs! These groups of
     runaway Hindu converts would come to these Hindu states only to find that
     not only their own, but no other Hindu state was prepared to accept them in
     their fold. If at all they wished to live in the Hindu states, these men and
     women of the runaway shelter-seeking groups had to live as Muslims alone!
     Later on, when after a century or so, the Muslim armies began to make
     successful expeditions upto Delhi and central India, they were very much

surprised to see these people still living in these Hindu states as Muslims. If
any such group or community of the Hindus were found to be existing in
the Muslim states, it could never have been allowed to live as a Hindu
community any longer! For, by force or by craft, it would have been
converted to Islam. This was the experience of the Muslims! This was the
Muslim religion!
419. Here, however, in Hindu states, the Hindus who were converted
much against their will and who were willing to come back to the Hindu
society, and to live as none else but the Muslims, because of the ban on
their re-orientation! This was the Hindu Religion!
420. What wonder then, if in an unequal war, the Muslims defiled with
craft or coercion, millions of Hindus, and thus inflicted immeasurable
numerical loss to the Hindu nation.
The greatest wonder, however, is how this loss was limited to this much
alone!
❑

Perverted Conception of Virtues
421-422. Besides the silly superstitions of the Hindus about the caste-
system, the various bans on exchange of food and drink, redemption of the
outcastes and others, of which we have already written fully, and which had
done tremendously more harm than the two-pronged religio-political
Muslim offensive had done, another suicidal morbidity had completely
possessed the Hindu mind for a long time. This morbidity paralysed their
own offensive and counter-offensive might. Far greater than the Muslims
could ever attempt, were the defeats inflicted on themselves by these
morbidly virtuous Hindus! If a comparatively mild term is to be used for
this infatuation—this mental imbalance of the Hindus, which caused
disastrous losses for themselves—we have to call it a perverted sense of
Hindu virtues.
423. In fact, virtues or vices are only relative terms. No virtue can be
unqualified and absolute under every circumstance or at every place. Be it
said briefly, that in practice or in ethical code, a virtue should be called a
virtue only to the extent it is useful to the best interests of human society.
And the moment it begins to cause harm to mankind, it should be
considered a vice and as such discarded forthwith.
424. Some qualities at least are divided into three parts: Satwik (mild,
gentle), Rajas (passionate) and Tamas (irascible, irritable); and even these
should be viewed with reference to the peculiar conditon of time, place and
person. The Hindu civilization had the noblest ambition of raising Man to
the status of God and as such, it went in for an all-out attempt to inculcate
and cultivate with assiduous care, these gentle qualities in him. But this
worldly existence is not woven with one thread alone; its texture shows at
least three different threads: the gentle, the passionate and the irritable. It is
precisely for this reason that if a man, whosoever he may be, wishes to live
in this world, wants to win or at least does not intend to be vanquished by
others, or does not want to see injustice triumph over him, he must have a
three-edged weapon, which could successfully face these three-fold
qualities. But at this time of the Hindu-Muslim war, the Hindu nation forgot
even the Bhagwat Geeta, which preached the relative, and not absolute,
values of these virtues. Why, they even twisted the message of the Bhagwad
Geeta itself. The quintessence of the Bhagwat Geeta is the consideration of

the fine distinction between man and man—of which the Hindus of those
times seem to be divinely oblivious.
425. Of course, it must be remembered that all this argument applies
generally and collectively to the Hindu polity made up of hundreds of
millions of people, but it must also be remembered that there were to come
to life, from time-to-time, thousands of exceptional groups of men and
brave societies of dauntless people, who opposed this perversely virtuous
Hindu society in order to bring about a social revolution. They will be
referred to at their proper places.
426-427. To let go the vanquished and abjectly surrendering enemy, is
said to be a virtue in some religious books; so enemies like the ungrateful
Mohammed Ghori and the Rohila Najibkhan were set free. And what did
they do in return for this noble act of the Hindus? The first brutally
murdered his former benefactor, Prithviraj Chauhan, while the second
conspired against the very Marathas, who let him go alive and brought
about their unprecedented destruction at Panipat. Having only learnt by rote
the maxim, to give food to the hungry and water to the thirsty is a virtue,
the Hindus went on giving milk to the vile poisonous cobras and vipers!
Even while the Muslim demons were demolishing Hindu temples and
breaking to pieces their holiest of idols like Somnath, they never wrecked
their vengeance upon those wicked Muslims, even when they had golden
opportunities to do so, nor did they ever take out a single brick from the
walls of masjids, because their religious teachers and priests preached the
virtue of not inflicting pain on the offender:
‘Never pay the tormentor in his own coin but bear the torments meekly
and be patient that God will punish him.’
दिघलें दुःख पराने उसने फेडू नयेचि सोसावें।
शिक्षा देव तयाला करील म्हणुनि उगेच बैसावें॥
428. The vilest of vices recorded in the catalogues of the religious texts
could never have been more detrimental to the welfare of mankind, more
harmful to the national interests and so, more detestable than such virtues as
give rise to horrible atrocities and the greatest of sins. Naturally, whoever
cultivates and lives upto such virtues thoughtlessly and foolishly and with
slavish adherence to the religious texts, and also with fanatic obstinacy, is
bound to perish individually and bring about disaster of the nation he lives.
These qualities are not virtues; they are virtues distorted in the extreme.