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

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.

Whichever virtue is adopted thoughtlessly and without regard to the time,
place and person is corrupted and rotten, and, like putrefied food, becomes
poisonous.
429-430. Every Hindu seems to have been made to suck, along with his
mother’s milk, this nectar-like advice that religious tolerance is a virtue. But
nobody never explains to him the essence of that precept. If that alien
religion is also tolerant of our own religion, our tolerance towards it can be
a virtue. But the Muslim and the Christian religions, which boldly proclaim
it to be their religious duty to destroy most cruelly the Hindu religion and to
eradicate from the face of this earth the kafirs and the heathens, can never
be described as tolerant of other religions. In respect of these intolerant
foreign religions, the very extremely enraged intolerance, which seeks to
retaliate their atrocities with super-atrocious reprisals, itself becomes a
virtue!
431. Even if we were to restrict our discussion to the period under
discussion, it will be seen that every Muslim aggressor went on
demolishing Hindu temples at Mathura and Kashi (Benares). The most
sacred idols in the various magnificent shrines from all over India right upto
Rameshwaram were not only purposely taken to the Muslim capitals like
Delhi and plastered into the portal steps of their royal palaces, but, for the
sole purpose of hurting the feelings of the Hindus and insulting them, they
were also used as the slabs and tiles for lavatories, water-closets, and
urinals. To be tolerant towards those Muslims who called these and many
other atrocities their religious duty, is the very negation of virtue, its
sacrilegious perversion! Nay, for the Hindus to show such tolerance was the
greatest sin to be punished in Hell! But the Hindus committed this very sin
under the name of virtue! Even after overthrowing the various Muslim
powers, i.e. even when the Hindus had acquired political ascendancy, they
did not destroy the various masjids at Kashi (Benares), Mathura or
Rameshwaram, nor did they use their ruins as tiles for the various building
constructions along roads. At the most, the Hindus reconstructed and
renovated their old temples which were raised to the ground by the
Muslims. They did nothing more! On the contrary, there are astonishing
instances of grant of new lands for their maintenance and assurance of
protection of the masjids, which had been built by the Muslim aggressors,
by the Hindu powers. In this connection, one stray instance can be cited to
show the confusion of the then Hindu thought. It affords a shameless

exhibition of the perverted virtue of the Hindus, which makes any further
discussion in this regard absolutely unnecessary!
432-433. After Mahmud of Ghazni demolished the temple of Somnath for
the first time, it was rebuilt several times by the Hindus and destroyed by
the Muslim conquerors as many times! Once, when a powerful Hindu king
established his power in that region, he rebuilt it with all pomp and
ceremony, and under his able guidance, the land also prospered. This Hindu
ruler should have, in fact, debarred from entering into the Indian waters any
Arab traders, who used the Indian ports in this region of Sindh as watering
and fuelling stations on their way to the distant eastern and southern parts of
India. For, the Hindus often had the bitter experience of the Arab armies
and navies following these traders by sea. But in order to exhibit his
religious tolerance and generosity, this Hindu ruler not only did not stop
these Arabian traders from visiting the Indian coast, but treated them with
such great deal of hospitality that they might feel quite at home there.
Naturally, these Arabic traders, actuated whether by political trickery or by
religious pride, thought of building by way of a challenge, as it were, a
masjid just in front of the Somnath Temple, rebuilt by the Hindu kafirs. But
under the circumstances, then prevalent there, they could not do so by force
or bravado. Hence, with their usual craft, they applied in the most courteous
and humble words to the King for permission to build the masjid. And O
what wonder! That gullible Hindu King consented to it most willingly, and
up rose the new masjid challenging the Somnath Temple. As a matter of
fact, considering the highly miserable state to which the Temple of Somnath
was reduced by Mahmud of Ghazni and others, that Hindu King should
have wiped out of existence all the masjids, without exception, as soon as
he conquered the land and then and then alone, could he have restored the
Somnath Temple to its original glory. But instead of destroying the existing
masjids he permitted a new one to be built up and bestowed an annuity on it
for its maintenance. For this suicidal-religious tolerance (perversion of a
virtue again!), he had very soon to pay dearly; because when after some
time, the brutal forces of Alla-ud-Din and other Muslim aggressors attacked
Gujrat and killed thousands of Hindu men and raped as many Hindu
women, and pulled down hundreds of Hindu temples and marched straight
towards Somnath, how did these Arabs and their descendants repay the
religious tolerance of the Hindu King, who allowed the Arabian traders to
build the said masjid? Did they allow the restored Somnath Temple to

remain unmolested in return for the obligation of the Hindus—even if it
were to tantalize the Hindu gullibility and simplicity? No! The Muslim
armies battered the Temple to pieces once again, and outdid Mahumud of
Ghazni in taking away the sacred idol and the slab inside this temple to
Delhi and made them fit nicely into the pedestal for a masjid there.
434. Once again, when Hindu power was established in the region, Hindu
temples rose up and once more, the Muslims like Sultan Ahmed Shah,
ravaged the land with their usual religious ferocity and harassed the Hindus
there with wholesale massacres, rapes, arson and other incendiary activities.
Thousands of Hindus were taken prisoners and were sold as slaves in
foreign countries. Somnath remained a heap of rubble, but the notorious
masjid grew in importance. Besides the old masjids, which were preserved
and raised to greater glory by the Hindu rulers, the Muslim rulers built taller
and more spacious mosques.
435. It was this confused religious thought, the distorted sense of virtues
and the blind religious tolerance, that culminated in the religious suicide of
the Hindus. How many more incidents may one cite, which came off
century-after-century at every place right from Kashimir to Rameshwaram,
in the face of Muslim aggression? Still, one more instance may be narrated
here to show the perversion of another virtue by the Hindus; generosity—
misplaced genorosity!
435A. Siddharaj Jaysinh (1096-1143 A.D.) was a valiant king of
Anhilwad in Gujarat. He had also a very keen sense of justice. But he was a
Hindu king! He was deluded by the absolute values, without any regard to
time, place or person of all the virtuous ideologies about justice and
injustice, according to his own and the alien religion and especially
generosity and large-heartedness! Once during his reign, there was some
dispute between the Hindus and the Muslims near Cambay (Khambayat).
Writes Muhammad Ufi—himself a Muslim writer—in his book Jami‘-ul-
Hikayat.
436. “In the reign of King Jai Singh, there was a mosque and a minaret
from which the summons to prayers was cried out. The fire-worshipers
instigated an attack on the Musalmans, and the minaret was destroyed, the
mosque burnt down and eighty Musalmans were killed...” A certain
Muhammadan, a Khatib or a reader of the Khutba, by name Khatib ‘Ali’,
escaped and fled to Nahrwala. None of the courtiers of the Rai paid any
attention to him or rendered him any assistance. Having learnt that the Rai

was going out to hunt, Khatib ‘Ali’ sat down behind a tree in the forest and
awaited the Rai’s arrival. When the Rai reached the spot, Khatib Ali stood
up and implored the former to stop the elephant and listen to the latters’s
complaint. He then placed in his hand a “Kasida”, which he had composed
in Hindi verse stating the whole case. The Rai having heard this complaint,
placed Khatib Ali under the charge of a servant, ordering him to take care
of him... Later disguising himself in tradesman’s dress, the Rai entered the
city (of Khambayat) and stayed a short time in different places in the
market-place, making enquiries as to the truth of Khatib Ali’s complaint. He
then learnt that the Musalmans were oppressed and were slain without any
grounds The next day, he held a court. He said it was his duty to see that all
his subjects were afforded such protection as would enable them to live in
peace. He then gave orders that two leading men from each class of infidels
—Brahmins, fire worshippers (sometimes applied to Buddhists) and others
—should be punished. He gave one lac Balotras to enable the Musalmans to
rebuild the mosque and the minarets. He also gave some clothes to Khatib.”
Muhammad ‘Ufi: Jami’-ul-Hikayat, Elliot HIED Vol. II Pp. 162-163).
437. This Raja Jayasingh had gone on a foot pilgrimage to the rejuvenated
temple of Somnath and was a devotee of Shiva and had implicit faith in the
Hindu religion. Probably, because for this very reason, place of driving the
inveterate and crafty Muslim enemies out of his own kingdom or instead of
reconverting them to Hinduism, even if by means of force, he had the
masjids—the masjids of those Muslims who had reduced to mere rubble, not
only the temple of Somnath but hundreds of other temples in Gujarat and
thousands in other parts of India—rebuilt at the cost of the Hindus, and
offered them a special protection according to his Hindu creed of religious
tolerance and generosity!
438. Was it ever possible for the Hindus under Mahmud of Ghazni or
Muhammad Ghori or for those in the domain of the Sultan, who had gone
on killing the Hindus and ravaging their lands—was it ever possible for
them to complain to any Muslim governor of the land against the
destruction of their own temples? (Let alone the appeal for the restoration
of such a demolished temple!) To complain in such a way would itself have
amounted to a very grave offence of the kafirs, according to the Muslim
religious code, and for this very offence, every one of the Hindu men and
women would have been sold in Kabul or Kandhar as wretched slaves. But
such treacherous and dangerous Muslims were allowed by the Hindu kings

to live in large colonies, and were treated with special honour in order to
bolster up their creed of religious tolerance. And in thousands of cases
during the long period of Hindu-Muslim war, these very minority Muslims
who had been living as refugees in the Hindu states, never failed to rebel or
sabotage the Hindu war-efforts, as soon as there was any foreign Muslim
invasion. Even while they were seeing all these treacherous activities of the
Muslims, the Hindu kings went on practising and committing to their
memory the precepts of religious tolerance and large-heartedness, in utter
disregard of the proper place, time or person and, of course, they fell as
miserable victims. This is verily the distortion of virtue itself!
The Grave Danger of the Muslim Abduction and Pollution of Millions
of Hindu Women
439. One side-issue of the Muslim religious aggression, which caused a
continuous drain on the numerical superiority of the Hindus, was the
diabolic Muslim faith that it was a religious duty of every Muslim to kidnap
and force their own religion into non-Muslim women. This incited their
sensuality and lust for carnage and while it enormously increased their
number, it affected the Hindu population in an inverse proprotion. To
hesitate to acknowledge this hard fact under the guise of politeness, is
simply a puerile self-deception. This abduction of thousands and millions of
Hindu women by the Muslims is not such a trifling thing as to be dispensed
with, by calling it religious fanaticism or simply by conniving at it. Even if
it were a madness, there was a method in it! And the method in this Muslim
madness was so horrible, that with the mistaken Hindu neglect of this so-
called religious fanaticism, the Hindu nation came to have a perpetual
bleeding sore. For, as a matter of fact, the religious fanaticism of the
Muslims was not madness at all; it was an effective method of increasing
the Muslim population with special regard to the unavoidable laws of
nature.
440. The same law of nature is instinctively obeyed by the animal world.
If in the cattle-herds, the number of oxen grows in excess of the cows, the
herds do not grow numerically in a rapid manner. But, on the other hand,
the number of animals in the herds, with the excess of cows over the oxen,
grows in mathematical progression. The same is true of man, for at the core,
man is essentially an animal. Even in the pre-historic times, the so-called
wild tribes of the forest-dwellers knew this law quite well. The African wild
tribes of today kill only the males from amongst their enemies, whenever

there are tribal wars, but not the females who are eventually distributed by
the victor tribes among themselves. To obtain from them future progeny to
increase their numbers, is considered by these tribes to be their sacred duty!
It is said of at least one of the Naga tribes that when they attack an enemy,
they shoot simple unpoisoned arrows at the males, but if any women are
seen fighting on the enemy side, highly envenomed arrows are used to kill
them instantly. For they argue, to kill one woman who cannot be captured
alive is as good as to kill five men.
441. This very natural law was adopted and obeyed openly by the
aggressive but numerically poor African Muslim armies and their chiefs
while attacking the major populations of North Africa. On conquering those
kafirs, the ransom that was collected was calculated in terms of money and
women in equal share, and these women, collected as ransom, were
distributed by fives or tens amongst the most faithful followers of Islam.
The future progeny of these conquered women was born Muslim and so
amongst the Muslim environments became literally fanatical. The Muslim
chiefs who thus multiplied their numbers rapidly were honoured as ‘Ghazis’
by the religious authorities. The law of the Muslim religious warfare
granted the victorious Muslim army every right to own the kafir women as
completely as their other movable or immovable property.
442-443. After Ravan abducted Seeta and Shree Ramchandra marched on
him, some of his well-wishers advised the demon king, just before the war,
that because of his unjust act, the demon kingdom was threatened with a
terrible war and that he should send Seeta back to her husband, because it
was highly irreligious to kidnap her. “What?” cried the wrathful Ravan. “To
abduct and rape the women folk of the enemy, do you call it irreligious?
Pooh; Pooh!”
— राक्षसानाम् परोधर्मः परदाराविघर्षणम्
(To carry away the women of others and to ravish them is itself the
supreme religious duty of the Rakshasas.) ‘Parodharmah’, the greatest duty!
444. With this same shameless religious fanaticism, the aggressive
Muslims of those times considered it their highly religious duty to carry
away forcibly the women of the enemy side, as if they were commonplace
property, to ravish them, to pollute them and to distribute them to all and
sundry, from the Sultan to the common soldier and to absorb them
completely in their fold. This was considered a noble act, which increased
their number.

445. In every province where the Muslim rule established itself, the
     Sultan, the Nawabs and the Nizams—why even the meanest of Muslim
     officers in every town and village therein, levied on the Hindu population
     not only the Jazia tax for collecting wealth; but also the heinous tax of
     demanding openly the daughters and even married ladies from the Hindu
     royal families and others of high rank, and even carried them away forcibly
     and openly.
446. After Sindh, the Arabs did not attempt another invasion of India, yet
     the Arab bands did come here along with other Muslim armies, and like
     these Arabs, all those newly converted people like the Persians (Iranians),
     the Turanians, the Afghans, the Turks, the Moghuls and others fell on India
     with all the ferocity at their command. Obviously, they had not brought
     their millions of womenfolk along with them. But all those from the
     Sultans to the common soldiers, as a rule, began to settle down here with
     the kidnapped Hindu women, whom they either married or simply kept as
     their concubines. Let alone the vast numbers of Hindu women of high as
     well as low ranks, who led the most ignoble of lives in the harems of the
     Emperors, Sultans or Nawabs, but almost every Muslim kept at least three
     or four such forcibly pulluted women. Thus, women in this aggressive
     Muslim community came to be more numerous than men, and polygamy
     being an accepted practice sanctioned by their religion, these foreign
     Muslim communities began to grow rapidly year-after-year, from a few
     thousands to millions and more.
447. An interesting point to note is that Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak,
     Sultan Shikandar, Sultan Phiroz-Shah Tughlak and many other devilish
     Hindu-haters were born of Hindu mothers!
     Muslim Women too played their Devilish part in the Molestation and
     Harassment of the Hindu Women
448. Hindu women were considered kafirs and born slaves. So these
     Muslim women were taught to think it their duty to help in all possible
     ways, their molestation and forcible conversion to Islam. No Muslim
     woman, whether a begum or a beggar, ever protested against the atrocities
     committed by their male compatriots. On the contrary, they encouraged
     them to do so and honoured them for it. A Muslim woman did everything in
     her power to harass such captured or kidnapped Hindu women. Not only in
     the troubled times of war, but even in the intervening periods of peace and
     even when they themselves lived in the Hindu kingdoms, they enticed and

carried away young Hindu girls, locked them up in their own houses or
conveyed them to the Muslim centres in masjids and mosques. The Muslim
women all over India considered it their holy duty to do so.
The Hindu Chivalry towards Enemy Women
449. The Muslim women never feared retribution or punishment at the
hands of any Hindu for their heinous crime. They had a perverted idea of
woman chivalry. If in a battle the Muslims won, they were rewarded for
such crafty and deceitful conversions of Hindu women; lull even if the
Hindus carried the field and a Hindu power was established in that
particular place (and such incidents in those times were not very rare) the
Muslim men alone, if at all, suffered the consequential indignities but the
Muslim women—never! Only Muslim men, and not women, were taken
prisoners. Muslim women were sure that even in the thick of battles, and in
the confusion wrought just after then, neither the victor Hindu chiefs, nor
any of their common soldiers, nor even any civilian would ever touch their
hair. For, albeit enemies and atrocious, they were women! Hence, even
when they were taken prisoner in battles, the Muslim women—royal ladies
as also the commonest slaves—were invariably sent back safe and sound to
their respective families! Such incidents were common enough in those
times. And this act was glorified by the Hindus as their chivalry towards the
enemy women and the generosity of their religion! For a sample, read the
following incidents.
450. Even now we proudly refer to the noble acts of Chhatrapati Shivaji
and Chimaji Appa, when they honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of
the Muslim Governor of Kalyan and the wife of the Portuguese governor of
Bassein respectively. But is it not strange that, when they did so, neither
Shivaji Maharaj nor Chimaji Appa should ever remember, the atrocities and
the rapes and the molestation, perpetrated by Mahmud of Ghazni,
Muhammad Ghori, Alla-ud-din Khilji and others, on thousands of Hindu
ladies and girls like the princesses of Dahir, Kamaldevi, the wife of
Karnaraj of Karanwati and her extremely beautiful daughter, Devaldevi.
Did not the plaintive screams and pitiful lamentations of the millions of
molested Hindu women, which reverberated throughout the length and
breadth of the country, reach the ears of Shivaji Maharaj and Chimaji
Appa?
451. The souls of those millions of aggrieved women might have perhaps
said, “Do not forget, O, your Majesty, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and O!

Your Excellency, Chimaji Appa, the unutterable atrocities and oppression
and outrage committed on us by the Sultans and Muslim noblemen and
thousands of others, big and small. Let those Sultans and their peers take a
fright that in the event of a Hindu victory, our molestation and detestable lot
shall be avenged on the Muslim women. Once they are haunted with this
dreadful apprehension, that the Muslim women, too, stand in the same
predicament in case the Hindus win, the future, Muslim conquerors will
never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women.”
451A. But because of the then prevalent perverted religious ideas about
chivalry to women, which ultimately proved highly detrimental to the
Hindu community, neither Shivaji Maharaj nor Chimaji Appa could do such
wrong to the Muslim women.
452. It was the suicidal Hindu idea of chivalry to women, which saved the
Muslim women (simply because they were women) from the heavy
punishments of committing indescribable sins and crimes against the Hindu
women. Their womanhood became their shield, quite sufficient to protect
them.
453. Still worse was the ridiculous idea, which the Hindus of those times
entertained, that it was a sin to convert a Muslim woman to Hinduism. They
foolishly thought that to have any sort of relations with a Muslim woman
meant their own conversion to Islam. Naturally, even in the midst of a
Hindu community and the Hindu state, they were secure against any
attempt by the Hindus at abducting them or their forcible conversion to
Hinduism. Exceptions, however, were very rare.
454. Under these circumstances, the Muslim feminine class [fair (?) sex]
was left seraphically free from any chastisement or penalty for their share
of the crimes perpetrated against the Hindu woman-world, and their work
of enticing and ensnaring the Hindu women and forcing them to accept
Islam, went on for hundreds of years, unhampered and unimpeded.
But if
455. Suppose, if from the earliest Muslim invasion of India, the Hindus
also, whenever they were victors on the battlefields, had decided to pay the
Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punished them in some other ways, i.e.
by conversion even with force and then absorbed them in their fold, then?
Then with this horrible apprehension at their heart, they would have
desisted from their evil designs against any Hindu lady. If they had taken
such a fright in the first two or three centuries, millions and millions of

luckless Hindu ladies would have been saved all their indignities, loss of
their own religion, rapes, ravages and other unimaginable persecutions. Our
woman-world would not have suffered such a tremendous numerical loss,
which means their future progeny would not have been lost permanently to
Hinduism, and the Muslim population could not have thrived so
audaciously. Without any increase in their womenfolk, the Muslim
population would have dwindled into a negligible minority.
456. The sociological explanation for this contention has already been
offered in paragraphs 439 to 446.
457. But haunted with the fantastic idea of chivalry to enemy-women and
a blind eye to time, place or person, the Hindus of that period never tried to
chastise the Muslim womenfolk for their wrongs to Hindu women, even
when the former were many a time completely at their mercy.
Misplaced Chivalry to Enemy Womenfolk and the Consequent
Miserable plight
458. Well, did this misplaced chivalrous idea of the Hindus have any
salutary effect on their Muslim foes? Were the latter ever ashamed of their
sin of molesting a Hindu woman in view of this Hindu religious generosity
and high mindedness? Did the Muslims ever sincerely feel thankful to the
Hindus for the safe return of thousands of Muslim women to their own kith
and kin? Never! On the contrary, they again and again reciprocated Hindu
chivalrous behaviour with the same old treachery and atrocity, and thus held
it to ridicule and scorn.
459. On the contrary, the Muslims were puffed up, perhaps with the
thought, that if at all the Hindus were to show chivalry to anybody, it should
have been to their own Hindu women! It was they who had the first right to
such a chivalrous treatment! But if the Hindus could not rescue thousands
of their own women who were being abducted, polluted and forced into
Islamic religion in their very presence, through centuries, why should the
Muslims not ridicule the Hindu chivalrous idea of civility to women, even
enemy women? On the contrary, they perhaps thought that the Hindus dared
not think of violating or even insulting the Muslim women for fear of
horrible reprisals. Thus, they were more likely to misconstrue the Hindu
idea of chivalry, than interpret it in the right sense as to have been born of
cowardice than of strength and bravery.
The Hindus of the Pre-Islamic era never Interpreted Chivalry to
Women in this Anti-National silly way

460. A serpent, whether male or female, if it comes to bite must be killed.
     The enemy women, who enforced conversion and heaped all sort of
     humiliation on our mothers and sisters, had by that very devilish act, lost
     their womanhood and their right to chivalrous treatment, and deserved
     nothing but only the most stringent punishment for their atrocious crimes.
     Hence, when Tratika, the she-demon marched on Ramchandra with other
     demons, he killed her immediately, without a moment’s thought. When
     Shoorpanakha, another she-demon, rushed to eat away Seeta like cucumber,
     Laxman deprived her of nose and ears and sent her back—not honourably
     with generous gifts of ornaments, to show off his chivalay to women! When
     Narakasur carried away thousands of Aryan women to his Asur kingdom
     (Assyria of today), Shree Krishna marched upon the demon and killed him in
     the war. But he did not stop with military and political defeat he inflicted on
     Narakasur! He rescued all the thousands of imprisoned Aryan females,
     undergoing all sorts of humiliation there and brought them back to his own
     kingdom; and thus took a social revenge! Shree Krishna’s army did not
     forsake their kinswomen, simply because they were forcibly polluted and
     violated—a dastardly thought that he never entertained for a minute. On the
     contrary, Shree Krishna as the Bhoopati—the Lord of the whole Earth—
     brought all those sixteen thousand or more women to his kingdom,
     rehabilitated them honourably and took upon himself, the responsibility of
     feeding and protecting them. This very act of Krishna, as the Bhoopati has
     been fantastically construed by the writers of the Puranas as to describe him
     the husband of those thousands of women. He was later thought to have
     married all of them.
461. In the post-Puranik period, whenever our valiant and victorious
     princes vanquished the enemies like the Yavan, Shaka or Hun
     commandants, kings or emperors on the battlefield, they invariably married
     the enemy princesses. This seems to have been the tradition prevalent right
     from Chandragupta Maurya to the Gupta Emperors! Shalivahan kings too
     married Saka princesses. Not only our victorious kings but all Hindus, right
     from the Samants (feudatory princes) to common citizens, married
     unhesitatingly the Yavan, Saka or Hun women. The nation was valiant
     enough to absorb not only the progeny of those enemy-women, but the
     whole enemy communities in their own, and leave no trace of their origin
     behind.
     Harmful effects of the ban on Purification and Rehabilitation