471-472. Ahimsa (non-violence), kindness, chivalry even towards the
enemy women, protection of an abjectly capitulating enemy, क्षमा वीरस्य
भूषणम् (forgiveness, a glorious emblem for the brave!) and religious
tolerance were all virtues no doubt—very noble virtues! But it is blind and
slovenly—even impotent—adoption of all these very virtues, irrespective of
any consideration given to the propriety of time, place or persons, that so
horribly vanquished the Hindus in the millennial Hindu-Muslim war on the
religious front.
For
पात्रापात्रविवेकशून्य आचलि जरि सद्गुण॥
तों तोचि ठरे दुर्गुण, सद्धर्मघातक॥
[Every virtuous act done without the least regard to the propriety of the
persons concerned—without the least thought, whether the other person
deserves such noble treatment or not—becomes a glaring vice most harmful
to the true religion.]
❑

Super-Diabolic Counter-Offensive the
Only Answer
473. It has already been shown in the earlier chapters how the Hindu
Society was unable to recover its tremendous numerical losses suffered due
to forcible mass conversions and tyrannical anti-Hindu laws of Muslim
kings and sultans, because of its own silly, anti-national traditions of caste-
differences, bans on reconversion of the helpless Hindu proselytes, and the
like, and many other perverted concepts of virtue. Had it not been for some
prophetic social and religious reformers, astute diplomats, gigantic thinkers
and philosophers, and men of action among the Hindus of that time, who
towered, though only from time to time, over the all-pervading gloom and
guided their community, the Hindu society would never have escaped total
extinction.
Maharshi Deval and Medhatithi
474. Two of these thinkers are Maharshi Deval and Medhatithi, the critic
of Manusmriti, who unfailingly attract our attention because of their
dazzling intellectual brilliance. Their extant writings show us, beyond any
shadow of doubt, that even during those calamitous years, that intervened
between the first Arab invasion of Sindh and the Muslim religio-political
atrocities in the Punjab and its final occupation, they had pointed out to
Hindus brave new ways, new religious thoughts, new weapons which were
calculated to bring them success.
475-476. The Chapter on the pollution of religion in Deval Smriti, begins
with the line
सिंधुतीरमुपासन्नम्! देवलं मुनिसत्तमम्!
It clearly shows that it was in Sindh first, that a section of Brahmins,
Kshatriyas and others was organised. It determined to improve the code of
social and religious behaviour of the Hindus as much, at least, as to
recuperate the numerically stupendous losses suffered at the hands of the
Muslims. For, they clearly saw that the laws of behaviour laid down in
different smritis were in every way powerless to counteract the armed
religio-political aggression of the enemy. The Hindu leaders, present in the
hermitage of Deval on the bank of the Indus, once asked the sage, “Will it
be possible to bring back to Hinduism, thousands of Hindu men and

women, who have fallen victim to the religious persecution of the Muslims
and have been forcibly converted to Islam, by some form of atonement and
by repurification?” The verses in Deval Smriti clearly mention that such
discussions were held at different times and the authoritative and final
answers were given, and the rules of conduct propounded by Maharshi
Deval favouring reconversion. These advocates and writers of this new
Smriti and their followers declared as unlawful and irreligious in those
adverse circumstances, the very religious act of banning reconversion as it
was causing tremendous numerical losses to the Hindus.
Special Weapons for Special Occasions
477-478. In the armoury of our religious code of conduct, there always
had been very special and progressive weapons for meeting very special
and exceptional circumstances. All that was needed was a class of leaders to
use them from time to time! If in the initial stages of adverse times of the
Hindu-Muslim war, these special and exceptional weapons had only been
unsheathed and sharpened, Hinduism itself might have completey routed
Islam from the Indian soil, as it happened when the valiant (because they
were attacking the enemy!) and victory-longing gods and the Aryans fought
with the demons (dashyus). Even if the same religious resplendence was not
uniformly shown by the Hindus, it was, in some measure, seen in the
revolutionary religious reforms of Deval Maharshi of Sindh. Maharshi
Deval is said to have lived sometime between A.D. 800 to A.D. 900.
479. Because of this religious resplendence alone, Deval Maharshi could
kick away the traditional religious ban on redemption for the unwilling
converts and propounded in his Smriti, an expedient of atonement for the
sin of conversion. It has been laid down in the Deval Smriti, that if, within a
certain period of his or her forcible conversion to Islam, a Hindu man or
woman showed his or her desire to be reconverted to Hinduism with due
atonement, he or she was to be administered simple and practical penance
of fast or something else and absorbed once again in the Hindu society. The
liberal attitude of this Smriti towards women, in the context of the times is
specially laudable. It enjoined that the women forcibly converted to Islam,
or those who served in the Muslim households as menial servants or slaves,
be considered pure after their next menses and should be completely
absorbed in the Hindu community. Even a pregnant Hindu woman, freed
from the Muslim bondage, was to be considered as pure as a bar of gold

after being heated in the goldsmith’s chafing dish, once her foetus came out
after delivery.
480. It is, however, really strange that even this Deval Smriti, which was
so particular about the re-purification and reconversion of the fallen Hindu
women, with a view to stopping the numerical losses of our community,
should not have cared to do the same for their children born of the Muslim
women. It is very difficult to explain why it should have failed to do so. We
were reminded of this Deval Smriti when once we were told of a custom
amongst the Bengali Hindus: if a child widow or an unmarried girl in a
Hindu family gave birth to an illegitimate child, it was to be solicitously
given over to the Muslims, who lived beyond the local river for being
brought up as their own. This expedient was no doubt thought of by the
Hindu priesthood with the best intention of saving the family from public
humiliation and the society from every contagion of that sin. The Muslims
too, thinking that these Hindu children increased their number, gladly
accepted them. The simple god-fearing Hindus on the other hand, never for
once understood that their own number decreased to that extent. It is quite
evident that this Bengali custom must have been popularized by some
Smriti like the Deval Smriti.
481. The basic cause of this cowardly arrangement made by even those
reformers who condemned the caste division, ban on repurification of the
‘fallen’ and favoured reconversion, was the deep-rooted silly belief of the
Hindus, that the purity of the caste was to be preserved at all costs and even
at the risk of caste extinction. But the Hindu society of those days never
understood that the very same purity of their caste was lost, when lakhs of
their women fell into the hands of the Muslims, and that if those
prohibitions on reconversion were to continue, the whole of the Hindu
society would perish.
482. Another thing to be noted is that the portion, now extant, of the Deval
Smriti does not provide for the conversion of the original Muslims to
Hinduism, as it did for the conversion of the unfortunate Hindu converts.
The reason probably is only this, that the Hindus considered it a great sin to
admit another community into their own fold. Even the religious laws gives
up to the writer of the Bhagwat Geeta seemed to be extremely worried how
to keep off the intermingling of the castes and subcastes within the Hindu
Society itself.

483. In fine, we can say, the daring reformers at the Ashram of Maharshi
     Deval made at least some provision for admitting the forcibly converted
     Hindu men and women to the Hindu society. But it seems that the writers of
     Smritis and the warriors of the time dared not use at every stage, more
     violent means to beat down the monstrously violent Muslim aggression.
     Nevertheless, under the adverse circumstances, when the Muslim power
     had established itself firmly in the land, this religious revolt of the hundreds
     of Hindu leaders like Deval and others was not a small thing.
     Check on Muslim Religious Aggression in Sindh
484. Strangely enough, the above-mentioned attempt of the Hindu leaders
     like Deval was supported by the Hindu society as a whole. The Hindu
     society, which was originally zealously fond of their caste-sysetem,
     reconverted thousands of convert men and women and absorbed them in
     their midst. Not only on the political (cf. para 357) front, but on the
     religious front, too, the Muslims were thus beaten completely in Sindh. This
     two-fold victory of the Hindus in Sindh—of reconquering Sindh within
     thirty years of Kasim’s invasion and maintaining their grip on it for nearly
     two hundred years afterwards, and of the revolutionary redemption of the
     ‘fallen’, by Maharshi Deval and others—has to be stressed again and again,
     as it has not been adequately described not even mentioned at all, in Indian
     histories.
485. Although there is very slender evidence on our side to bear out this
     two-fold Hindu victory in Sindh, we can find a stronger proof in the
     writings of the enemy. The Muslim writers were vexed at their general rout
     in the reconquest of Sindh by the Hindus.
486. Al Biladuri (or Baladhuri) writes, “In the days of Tamim, the
     Musalmans retired from several parts of India and left their
     position...Hakim, son of Awanah al Kalbi, succeeded Tamim. The people of
     India had returned to idolatory, excepting those of Kassah and the
     Musalmans had no place of security in which they could take refuge, so he
     built a town on the other side of the lake facing India and called it Al
     Mahfuza, ‘the secure’, and this he made a place of refuge and security for
     them and their chief town.” (Elliot HIED, Vol. I., p. 126.)
487. History places Maharshi Deval somewhere between A.D. 800 and
     A.D. 900. Round about this period, i.e. about A.D. 850 to A.D. 950, was
     born fortunately for the Hindus, another upholder of this new surge of
     religious revival. He sought to overcome the disastrous Muslim religious

aggression with still more disastrous counter-aggression. The weapon
worship religious law given by Acharya Medhatithi, became the most
effective guidance to the Hindus, like the Arthashastra of Arya Chanakya to
the generation of the valiant Chandragupta Maurya. To the whole of
Aryavarta, he wanted to teach once again the lesson of expansionism and
victorious imperialism. Medhatithi, the new interpreter of Manusmriti, was
the sole religious leader and perhaps the last of the writers of Smriti. He
tried to erect before the perplexd Hindus of the 9th and 10th centuries, a
huge lighthouse tower of the former Aryan imperialism and expansionism
of Chanakya, and to regenerate into them, new courage to push ahead
determinedly and strike hard at the aggressor. His intention was clearly to
animate his society with the vibrant inspiration to repulse instantly the
armed religious aggression of the Muslims of those times, in the same
magnificent tradition of the Aryan empires of old and with their military
strategy, in fighting down the aggressive rakshasas (enemies). He wanted
the Hindus to establish not only the old empire of Aryavarta, but to conquer
and annex the Muslim states even beyond the limits of Aryavarta and
establish Hinduism there, if necessary, even with force. The Aryan slogan
‘Krunvanto Vishvam Aryam’ (We are going to make the whole world
Aryan) of the Vedic times, resounds incessantly throughout his critique on
Manusmriti.
488. There had been a great confusion wrought in the Hindu Society over
a thousand years or so preceding Medhatithi’s age by the anti-national and
imbecile social traditions (which we have mentioned so far and will
mention hereafter), about the differentiation of caste, religious tolerance and
fear of pollution, which appeared as if laid down by the shritis (Vedas), and
ruled as per the injunction of the Smritis. The critic Medhatithi was the only
one, who on seeing the miserable plight of the Hindus determined to check
their downward course and convulse the imbecile and intellectually
stagnant Hindu society into its original Aryan form. Naturally, he decided to
criticise Manusmriti itself, which was considered to be the basic foundation
of all other smritis. He ruthlessly tested the laws of political conduct
propounded therein on the anvil of Chanakya’s Arthashastra. In this way,
with the original Manusmriti of the Aryans in one hand and the empire-
worshipping conquest-loving Kautilya’s Arthashastra in the other,
Medhatithi declared irreligious all the codes of conduct, which had been

rendered impotent because of the imbecile and intellectually sterile Hindu
Ahimsa. With one stroke of remonstrance like the following:
489. या वेदब्राह्याः यस्मृतमयः याश्च काश्च कुदृष्टयः।
सर्वास्तान् विपरीतार्थान्, वेदविद् न समाचरेत्॥
He rendered not only all the silly ‘codes of conduct’, but even the smritis
that called them caste-laws absolutely defunct and valueless.
490. Most probably, Medhatithi might have seen and heard about all the
religious persecution by the Muslims in Sindh and the Punjab and the
failure of the Hindus, for various reasons already discussed, to avenge it or
even to counteract it effectively. Naturally, in order to din once again into
the ears of the then defeated, fallen and perplexed Aryan nation the echoes
of the smritis of the old Aryavarta, which was on its way to glory and
which, with the motto • कृण्वन्तो विश्वम् आर्यम on its banner was
conquering in all directions, Medhatithi picked up and extolled in his own
critique as Manu’s original commandments, only the warlike, arms-adoring
and imperialistic religious rites and precepts. All others, he condemned as
वेदब्राह्याः स्मृतयः (smritis against the Vedas)! His thundering sentences
did not befit the then powerless Hindu kings, nor could those kings utter
them with proper dignity and grandeur. Those precepts were really meant
for an Emperor like Chandragupta or Emperor Pushyamitra!
491-492. Medhatithi clearly declares that to invade another kingdom—
especially an enemy state—can never be an injustice in political science. It
is, on the other hand, the duty of a king, he said, to pounce upon the non-
Hindu enemy and crush him before he grows powerful enough to invade the
former. In statesmanship, the protection of the Aryavarta is the supreme
duty of a king. That is why he condemns as suicidal, dilatory and so adverse
to the kingly duty, everything that the other imprudent foolhardy critics
recommend as proper code of conduct: viz that while attacking a foreign
kingdom and especially the Muslim kingdom, the Aryan kings should not
strike till the other gives offence of some sort or the other. On the contrary,
he says that the neighbouring king is an enemy is in itself his fault; at an
opportune moment, he should be pounced upon and crushed. What more, if
the neighbouring non-Aryan kingdom is seen to be getting stronger and
mightier than our Aryan state, whether it is guilty of any tangible offence or
not, we should ourselves form alliance with other friendly or unfriendly

powers and go to war against this non-Aryan state, the moment we are
assured of success.
493. Throughout the critical treatise of Medhatithi, one dominant
aspiration makes itself felt on almost every page that the smaller states of
Shreeman Bhojraj—the Rajput prince—and other Hindu kings should be
united into a powerful kingdom and once again a mighty empire like the old
—nay, an invincible and victorious Bharatiya Empire—should rise on the
Indian soil. From this point of view, while writing about the other kingly
duties, he has emphasized one, viz. that even before the Mlenchchas (non-
Aryans) attack an Aryan state, the latter should march against the enemy
kingdom. Once you are engaged in war with the enemy, you should throw
kindness and generosity to the winds and crush the enemy outright. The
crafty enemy should be struck down with super-cunning and skilful
deception under any pretext whatsoever. In a war, the so-called virtues like
honesty, simplicity, consistency in speech and action and politeness,
gentility and generosity themselves prove fatal to the nation. Hence, a king
should not fall a prey to them—should keep himself aloof from them.
494. Medhatithi has most powerfully expounded this sort of stern political
theory (ethics). For, it was absolutely essential for saving the Hindus from
complete annihilation at the hands of the Muslims, because of their
simplicity. To teach them the arch-diplomacy of Arya Chanakya, was his
sole aim. Medhatithi plainly says that the Aryadharma nowhere decrees that
the Aryans should confine themselves to the boundaries of Aryavarta. On
the contrary, the pith and marrow of the religious code of the Hindus, he
says, is that if the mighty Aryan kings invade the non-Aryan kingdoms
beyond the Aryavarta and conquer them, and immediately spread their
Aryadharma there and finally establish their empire in those lands, then
even those former non-Aryan lands should thereafter be considered Aryan
lands and incorporated in Aryavarta!
495. At least some Hindu states of those times followed these precepts of
Medhatithi and like Chanakya's ideal disciple, Chandragupta, literally
crossed the boundaries of Aryavarta and waged successful wars against the
Muslim powers. Although to the north, the frontier Hindu states were
forced not to cross but to defend their boundaries, yet till nearly one
hundred and fifty years after the death of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Southern
Hindu states remained independent and powerful. So the Indian Hindu
States were able to carry out the victorious political experiments of the

Mauryan era as per the injunctions of Medhatithi And that is why the
Kalingas, the Pandyas, the Cheras, Cholas and other Hindu states sent
powerful naval expeditions across the Western (often misnamed the
Arabian Sea), the Southern and the Eastern Seas, carrying their victorious
banner to the non-Aryan kingdoms, right up to the African coast on the one
side and the Chinese on the other. The astonishing fact is that while in the
north, Mahmud of Ghazni and Mohammed Ghori were ravaging and
plundering capital-after-capital and temple-after-temple of the Hindus and
trampling down their powerful kingdoms in the South, the colossal temples
like the one at Bhuvaneshwar were being erected. Kings like Rajendra
Chola marched with their mighty victorious naval forces, through Burma,
Pegu, the Andamans and the Nicobars and other archipelagos in the Eastern
Sea. They visited the Hindu confederate states in Java, Indo-China and
Thailand, conquered the Lakshadiv and Maldiva island states in the Western
Sea, and finally conquering Ceylon, hoisted their invincible flag on the
Southern Ocean.
496. It is doubtless that on the strength of religious authority of
Medhatithi, illumined by the glorious tradition of Chanakya, these
victorious Hindu naval forces conquered kingdom-after-kingdom beyond
the great seas and annexed them to the Aryan empire. This was
accomplished not on the hobby horse to tight conventions and rigid
injunctions which came into force a century or two before, but because of
the enlightening and guiding commentaries of Medhatithi.
❑

10.

Intermittent Hindu Retaliation Against

Muslim Religious Aggression

497. At the end of an earlier chapter, we had expressed our astonishment
     as to how the Hindu Society did not perish completely in spite of the
     various defects of class-differences, ban on reconversion misconceptions
     about virtues and the like, and how it escaped with the loss of only some
     millions of Hindus converted. For beyond the frontiers of India, wherever
     such Muslim religious aggression took place, the natives there were totally
     deprived of their religions. The northern coast of Africa up to Spain and the
     Asian lands up to the frontier India, were totally converted to Islam. But in
     India alone, then attempts were not completely successful. At the time of
     Muhammad Kasim’s invasion of Sindh in the 8th century and then from the
     11th century, i.e. for nearly a thousand years, from the marauding
     expedition of Mahmud of Ghazni and of Ghori to the complete overthrow
     of the Moghul empire by the Peshwas in the 18th century, the Muslim
     invaders violently converted lakhs of Hindus and tried to multiply their
     numbers. The circumstances in this land—most adverse for the Hindus—
     also favoured them. Why then did the Muslims fail to destroy the Hindu
     Society completely?
498. The first reason that can explain this strange occurrence is the
     political defeat, which the Hindus inflicted on these Muslims. In the initial
     stages, Bhim and Rana Pratap and other Rajput princes and next, the Hindu
     kings of Vijayanagar had rendered the Muslim power out of gear and
     crippled it. Lastly, the Marathas dealt it deadly blows and fluttered their
     victorious banner under the leadership of the Peshwa right up to Attock.
     This political defeat of the Muslims at the hands of the Hindus, which is
     well known to all, made it impossible for the Muslims to bring all the
     Hindus under their green flag.
499. But the other potent reason for this strange phenomenon is that there
     arose from time to time, heroic men and women warriors, who staunchly
     opposed the armed religious aggression of the Muslims with counter
     aggression following the precepts of Maharshi Deval and Medhatithi. It is
     this counter-aggression on the religious front by the Hindus, that has really

saved the Hindu society from total extinction. Some stray incidents are
cited here to show how the Hindus did it.
500. (1) After the Muslims conquered Sindh, the celebrated Bappa Raval
of Mevad attacked not only Sindh, but the Muslim strongholds beyond that
land and annexed them to his territory. He even went further, as the Rasos
(political biographies) of the Rajput princes tell us. He married a Muslim
princess, who was captured at the final Muslim rout and kept her in his
harem along with his other queens. His offsprings from this Muslim
converted princess were respected in the society as born in the family of the
Sun god. In respect of this progeny of the King of Mevad, the Hindus of
that time did not always act with foolish religiosity of the Marathas, who
refused to accept the son of the valiant Bajirao Peshwa from his Muslim
wife, Mastani, and forced the child back into the Muslim society.
501. (2) Raval Chechak of Jaisalmir married the daughter of Sultan
Haibatkhan named Somaldevi, and established her honourably in his Yadav
race.
502. (3) When Kanwar Jagmal, the eldest son of Rao Mallinath Rathod of
Marwad, heroically defeated the Muslim Sultan of Gujarat and annexed it
to his own domain, he married publicly the daughter of the Sultan, called
Gindoli, who was renowned for her exceptional beauty, and established his
offsprings, born of her, amongst the high ranked Jagirdars of Marwad and
assimilated them amongst the Rajputs completely.
503. (4) Besides all these, the Hindus here and there seem to have effected
bold prudent counter-strokes to the terrible calamity of the mass
conversions of Hindus by the Muslim aggressors, and foiled their attempts.
For instance, Raimal, the King of Marwad captured 600 Muslim women,
and after reconverting them to Hinduism, married them publicly to several
noblemen of his court.
504. (5) Kumbharana of Mevad likewise defeated the Muslims, taking all
the captured Muslim women to his Kingdom. He reconverted them and
married them to his noblemen as per their wishes.
505. (6) The celebrated historian of Rajasthan, Major Tod, has narrated
many more instances of this type.
506. (7) The different political histories, called Rasos of the Rajput royal
families, also mention many instances of this type of conversion and
assimilation of Muslim women into the Hindu society.

507. (8) Raja Jayasthiti of Nepal also avenged Muslim religious
     aggression in like manner. He too followed Medhatithi’s policy of rushing
     the wicked enemy. About A.D. 1360, Shamsuddin—the Nawab of Bengal
     —attacked Nepal and played havoc there, destroying many Hindu and
     Buddhist temples, converting violently hundreds of Hindu and Buddhist
     subjects. When this brave Hindu King came to the throne, he made Nepal a
     hotbed for the Muslims, drove them out completely and avenged the
     wrongs done to his subjects. Not only did he rebuild the ruined Hindu and
     Buddhist temples, but he even reconverted to Hinduism all the unfortunate
     Hindus and Buddhists, who had been the victims of the Muslim aggression.
508. (9) In the historical records of the times, like the Tarikhs, one
     curiously finds the Muslim writers themselves complaining that at the least
     opportunity, the Hindu kafirs converted even the Muslim women to
     Hinduism and married them in the Hindu community. Such events, of
     which no trace whatever, can be found in our Hindu historical books, are
     available only in the Muslim historical records.
509. (10) For instance, in Tarikh-i-Sorath, its Muslim writer says: “Even
     at the troubled times of Mahmud Ghazni’s expeditions, the King of
     Anhilwad at the first opportunity, carried away several of the Turkish,
     Moghul and Afghan women who lingered behind and the Hindus married
     them unhesitatingly.” He also puts it on record that whenever possible, the
     Hindus carried away Muslim women en masse and converted them to
     Hinduism! He has also given some interesting information on the
     purification and reconversion ceremony of Muslim women performed by
     the Hindus.
510. He says, “while converting the Muslim women as a class, the Hindu
     priests burned some barley over their heads. Then, they were given some
     water mixed with cowdung to drink. Then they were considered fit for all
     mutual dealings, and the Hindus married them as per their tastes and
     desires. At some places in the ceremonial mass conversion of Muslim
     women, these Hindus gave them purgatives and vomiting drugs, and
     thereafter, distributed them among the various Hindu castes and classes,
     according to their ranks. The fairest women fell to the lot of high-ranking
     Hindus. Sardars and noblemen married those of decent birth and lineage,
     while the maids and slaves were wedded to the Hindus of their respective
     classes. The whole progeny of these women was completely merged into
     those respective classes of the Hindu society.”

511. (11) When Arundevrai of Ajmer overcame the Muslims and ousted
     them from his land, he performed a great ceremony to purify the land which
     was rendered impure by the Muslim contact, and at that holy place, built a
     big temple and a lake named ‘Anasagar’. All the men and women, who
     were converted at the time of the Muslim domination, were all reconverted
     to Hinduism by merely dipping into this Anasagar lake and moreover, it
     was given out as a religious precept, that whichever Muslim convert bathed
     in this lake, with due declaration of his intention and according to some
     procedure, was to be considered purified and could enter Hinduism.
512. (12) Amarsingh Maharaj of Jaisalmir also performed a similar
     ceremony and built a lake called Amarsagar. In this lake, sanctified by the
     great ceremony, thousands of Hindus in Sindh, who were formerly
     converted to Islam, dipped en masse, declaring their intention to enter into
     Hinduism, and chanted Mantras while they bathed, and the religious
     authorities recognised their purification and reconversion to Hinduism.
513. (13) A reference has to be made to Shree Vidyaranyaswami, who like
     Maharshi Deval and Medhatithi, tried to check the Muslim religious
     aggression by inspiring the Hindus to retaliate, by bringing forth
     revolutionary proof of religious authority and sometimes enunciating new
     religious laws for the purpose. Shree Vidyaranyaswami had accepted not
     only the supreme leadership (authority) of the religious institution of
     Shankaracharya at Shringeri, but also of the revolutionary institution
     designed to overthrow the Muslim power and to establish in its place, a
     Hindu empire in order to protect Hinduism. He produced not only religious
     authority for the reconversion of the unfortunate Hindus leading a miserable
     life under Islam, but he himself publicly reconverted the once forcibly
     converted Harihar and Bukka, and when these two great warriors defeated
     the Muslims on several occasions, and established in A.D. 1336, the Hindu
     State of Vijayanagar, he himself crowned the reconverted Harihar as the
     Hindu Emperor.
514. After the overthrow of the Muslim power in Gomantak, this very
     Vidyaranya Madhavacharya built at a holy place, a lake named
     Madhavteerth and effected mass reconversion of the Muslimized Hindus
     with ceremonial baths in it. He also provided a religious authority for the
     future reconversion and purification.
515. (14) Shree Ramanujacharya, his disciples Shree Ramanand and Shree
     Chaitanya Prabhu of Bengal, also purified hundreds of Muslimized Hindus

with an administration of the vows of Vaishnavism.
516. (15) It is well known that the most daring and valiant Shree
Shivachhatrapati, who avenged all the wrongs done to the Hindus by
establishing a Hindu independent state, himself reconverted Bajaji,
Nimbalkar and Netaji Palkar, who had been forced to court Islam.
A Counter-Aggression?
517. (16) Towards the end of his career, Aurangzeb opened, with his huge
fourfold army, the most determined offensive against the Hindus. Before he
fell upon the Marathas, he wanted to crush the Rajputs. But no sooner did
he go away to the South, than the Rajputs retaliated with the same
vehemence and vigour and made up for the humiliation and numerical
losses of the Hindus. The glaring instance of Jodhpur may be cited here.
Under the leadership of powerful Maharana Jaswantsingh and the brave
Durgadas Rathod, not only the masjids, erected by Aurangzeb on the ruins
of Hindu temples, but all other masjids also were razed to the ground and
on their site, Hindu temples were built. The Jodhpurian Rajputs
reconverted not only the Muslimized Hindus, but as many of the Muslims
also as they could on an extensive scale. If the Muslim armies went on
throwing beef into the Hindu temples and wells, the Rathod armies cast
pork in masjid-after-masjid and paid them in the same coin. Hundreds of
Muslim women were converted to Hinduism and married to the Rajputs or
were simply kept as concubines, like the Hindu women by the Muslims
before them. The whole of the Muslim society in Rajputana was horror-
stricken to see this ferocious outburst of Hindu rage. Not merely for the sin
of eating and drinking with the Muslims but for having cohabited with and
married Muslim women, and even keeping them in their houses, Hindus
were no longer socially ostracized. For, at least thirty to forty years, this
Hindu retaliatory aggression on the Muslims had spread and glowed, and
resounded through town-after-town and village-after-village in the Hindu
states in Rajasthan. It is, of course, needless to say that with the decline of
the power of the brave Durgadas Rathod, this ferocious appearance of the
Hindu society also vanished.
Reason?
518. The reason is only this, that the abiding state of the Hindu mind at
that time, did not favour religious counter-aggression but social boycott.
The innate capacity of the Hindus for Rejuvenation

519. It is interesting to note how side by side with the repeated
     annihilating aggressions of Mahmud of Ghanzi and Ghori and other
     Muslims, and side-by-side, again with huge numerical losses suffered by
     the Hindus because of their morbid misconception of virtues and caste-
     differences, and the ban on repurification and reconversion, the age-old
     native missionary spirit and urge of the Hindu nation also burst into action
     elsewhere, acquiring not only political power but assimilating newer tribes
     of thousands of people. The story of the conversion of the Ahom tribe in
     Assam to Hinduism, can be cited here as a sample, noting at the same time,
     the spread of the Hindu empire in Indo-China and beyond, referred to
     already towards the end of the last chapter.
520. While hundreds of Hindu warships and merchant-marine were
     lording over the vast seas and oceans—the Gangasagar (The Bay of
     Bengal), the Sindhusagar (the Bay of Bombay) and the whole of the Indian
     Ocean—right from the Southern end of Africa to the very coast of China, it
     was impossible for any Hindu to have ever thought of the beggarly ban on
     sea-voyage! This conquest of the seas (by the Hindus), is also referred to
     earlier. The conversion of the Ahom tribe to Hinduism is described here as
     an illustration of how vis-a-vis the vast numerical losses suffered in the
     north because of the diabolic onslaughts of the Mahmud of Ghazni and
     Ghori, the Hindus went on winning religious victories and assimilating
     thousands of alien people into the Hindu religion.
521. Beyond Assam, many wild tribes had lived a nomadic life for
     generations together, subsisting on marauding and plunder. Ahom, a branch
     of one of these tribes, called Shan, began to press hard since the 8th century
     A.D. on the Hindu kings of Varman, Salstam and Pal dynasties adjoining
     Assam. In the end in A.D. 1228, King Sukapha began to rule all these lands.
     He was the first king to call himself and his subjects Ahom—Ajod—i.e
     unrivalled! These new administrators of the land boldly and successfully
     faced even the Moghul might. Sukapha's kingdom was also called Ahom
     and modern Assam, in the opinion of some scholars, is the corrupt form of
     Ahom.
     521A. The most astonishing fact is that among these various mountain
     tribes as among the Huns and the Sakas, the Hindu missions and
     missionaries then existing there, had planted the principles and rules of
     religious conduct as laid down by Hinduism, so deeply and firmly that as
     soon as he conquered Assam in A.D. 1554, another Ahom king along with

many of his tribe accepted Hinduism. Gradually, that whole tribe of
thousands of people merged itself into the Hindu society. That king changed
his original name in the Shan dialect to Jaydhwaj Singh, a name among the
Hindu Kshatriyas. All the later Ahom kings too took for themselves Hindu
names alone.
Ban on crossing attock and sea voyage
522. While the brave tribes, like the above mentioned Ahom, were
courting Hinduism even in its evil days, there was no likelihood of any ban
on purification or any caste-differences, to stop them from doing so. For,
these only made some new addition to the already existing numerous castes
in the Hindu nation. Some of their customs and manners were limited to
their particular castes, but all other rites and ceremonies were common to
all, in strict conformity with the injunctions of the Hindu Smritis. The ban
on purification and reconversion was being enforced more-and-more strictly
only towards the north up to Punjab, solely because of the ruthless atrocities
of the Muslims. The rest of the Indian continent was wholly free from the
danger of Muslim domination. The Muslims had not yet made any further
headway. Naturally, the ban on purification and reconversion had not so far
presented itself to them in any urgency. It should be told here, that the ban
on the crossing of the Attock, i.e. the injunction appearing in the later smritis,
declaring it a sin to cross the Indus and to go over into the Muslim lands,
must have been promulgated by our traditionalist priesthood, with the sole
intention of saving Hinduism. For, it was impossible that crossing the Indus
meant abandoning Hinduism (the Vedic cult) and being polluted, as it is
now amply proved that even after the ravages of Mahmud of Ghazni, the
whole of the region beyond the Indus even up to the Mount Pariyatra
(Hindukush mountains), was reconquered by the Hindus and the Hindu rule
spread up to Khotan. Even up to that time, ‘Krunvanto Vishwam Aryam’
was the motto inscribed on our national flag. ‘Traverse the whole world for
spreading Aryadharma’ was the supreme unqualified religious order of the
day!
523-524. But it becomes clear from the historical facts mentioned above,
that it is only when the Hindu states beyond the Indus were liquidated,
thousands of Hindus began to be violently converted to Islam by the
devilish Muslims, who subjected the followers of other religions to
harrowing persecution. The ban on crossing the Attock must, therefore,
have been enforced, owing to the helplessness caused by the lack of any

armed support for the Hindus in those regions. Another proof of this is the
provision in the (Smrityaite) smarta order (order-system-laid down by the
smritis) for adding or deleting according to the times and circumstances, the
religious duties beneficial or harmful to the nation. The verse:
“Different were the religious rites
and duties of the krit, Dwapar and
other epochs (ages) (But) owing to
the deterioration of the ages, the
duties of men have come to be different”
अन्ये कृतयुगे धर्माः
त्रेतायां द्वापरे परे॥
अन्ये कलियुगे नृणाम
युग ह्सानुरुपतः॥
expresses the idea very succinctly.
525. Naturally, when the Hindu kingdoms beyond the Indus were lost and
the Hindus and Persians and others were converted to Islam, under
unbearable persecution by the Muslim powers established there, and, as
such, when to go beyond the Indus became as horrible as to abandon one’s
own religion, it must have become absolutely necessary for the smritis to
issue the new order of the darkest hour (adverse times), that it was sinful
for any Hindu to cross the Indus, that the land beyond the Indus should be
considered a Muslim land. From this time onwards, therefore, the ban on
crossing Attock must have been strictly enforced.
526-528. The verse in Bhavishya Puran, which describes the new
boundaries of India, and which I myself brought to light for the first time
“The Aryan nation is best called
Sindhusthan. The land beyond the
Indus is made the land of the
Muslims by that great soul”.
सिंधु स्थानमिति प्राहुः
राष्ट्र भार्यस्य चोत्तमम्।
म्लेच्छ स्थानम् परं सिंधोः
कृतं तेन महात्मना॥

must have been appended to the smritis at this time, i.e. after Mohammed
Ghori’s invasion. This time is also mentioned in that verse itself. The then
Hindu Maharaja—great King—who fixed this boundary, and who is
referred to here by the phrase ‘by that great soul’, must probably be
Maharaja Bhoj of Dhara (999 AD - 1054 AD), the greatest among the
Hindu rulers of the time.
Smritis and the ban on sea voyages
529. Although the Muslim political conquests in the north brought upon
the Hindu nation, this miserable calamity of narrowing the northern and
north-western boundaries of India, yet it was limited to the north alone.
The rest of India, on this side of Punjab, the whole of Sindhausthan was free
to assimilate newer tribes beyond Assam, free to be the mistress of the
eastern, western and southern seas and extend its rule right up to Indo-
China and win new victories. Sinhaldweep (Ceylon) was also a Baby India
—a satellite Indian state! For, the island of Ceylon had all along been ruled
by royal dynasties of Indian extraction! The same is true of the Lakhadiv
and Maldiv and other archipelagos in the vast ocean up to the African
coast, which were under the authority of the Hindu kings. It is foolish to
think of any order by the Smritis which claimed to follow the Vedic cult,
banning sea voyage at that time. The greatest conquerors of all the quarters
like the Emperor Rajendra Chola were strict followers of the Vedic cult,
and took for themselves the title, ‘Trisamudreshwar’—ruler of the three
seas—as that of ‘Samrat’ in the north.
Sea Voyage and Fetters
530-533. The verse, ‘अन्ये कृतयुगे धर्माः त्रेतायाम् द्वापरे परे’...cited
above, indirectly points to the reason why helpless Hindu law-givers of
latter days, labouring under political slavery, were obliged to clamp this ban
on the voyage of the three seas in the South. The reason actuated in the
north the prevention of crossing the Indus into the lands beyond, was no
other than the religious persecution of the Hindus by alien religious
fanatics. In order that the insertion into the old original smritis of new
precepts and bans, calculated to meet the critical situations arising in future,
might be possible, a new concept of the deterioration of the age and the
chapter on rules of conduct prescribed in the ··¤çÜß...Øü
Âý·¤ÚU‡æ was cleverly adopted. It is needless to say that this concept

of the deterioration of the age and the theory of कलिवर्ज्य things, did
actually affect adversely the immutability of the old smritis. But such an
indirect change, in the best interests of the society, was unavoidable for the
religious law-givers of the times, who sometimes modified or enlarged
some old precepts, while they introduced some altogether new ones. The
verse, अन्ये कृतयुगे etc., which occurs in most of the smritis mentioned
above, bears out this remark very clearly. It is only in the smritis compiled
or edited in this Smrityite fashion after the periods of Maharshi Deval and
Acharya Medhatithi, that the unequivocal ban on sea voyage, denying every
sort of redemption for one undertaking sea voyage, and making illegal the
acceptance of such a person into his original religion or caste, seems to have
been enforced strictly. That period synchronizes with the preponderance of
Christians, more particularly the Portuguese, in our Western Sea, with the
Portuguese persecution and proselytization of the thousands of Hindus in
Gomantak (Goa), and with the Arab occupation of Java, Sumatra and Indo-
China and the wholesale violent conversion of the Hindu-Buddhist
population of those lands. This was the period when the sea-faring Hindu-
Buddhist states of the greater Indian empire, staunchly supported by the
gallant navies of the Cholas and the Pandyas, fell along with the whole of
Southern India, devastated before the Muslim might. It was the same period
when the Hindu ships stopped visiting those distant states and the Hindus
lost all contact with them. It was the most miserable, the most wretched
period in the religious and political life of the Hindu nation. Naturally, this
must have been the period when the ban on sea-faring was strictly and
universally clamped on the Hindus. And it is only in the latest smritis of this
period, let it be remembered, that the verses about the ban on the crossing of
Attock and that on sea-faring are to be found!
534. It is clear from the above-mentioned state of things that it was only
when every Hindu rover, crossing any of the three Indian seas, had to fall a
prey to the rapacious Muslim or Christian crocodiles, with no Hindu power
overlording the sea any longer, to protect him from that tragic fate, that their
foremost leaders had to issue this ban—this order not to cross the seas on
any occasion—with the noble intention of protecting the Hindu society.
535. A nation that obliged to suffer all sorts of humiliation heaped on her
natives and the adherents of the native religion (one which is obliged to see
helplessly foreign Muslim or Christian religions imposed on pain of death

upon her people, and which sadly lacks the armed might to ward off this
disastrous situation), has no other go than to forbid her people, of course,
for self-preservation alone, from going to the enemy lands.
Self-imposition of the ban on crossing attock or the seas
536. The greatest mistake made was that when these various bans were
interpolated in the older smritis, as the best means of serving the needs of
the particular hour, the spurious verses dealing with these bans were also
given the same sanctity, the same authenticity and the same inviolability by
stamping them with the old authoritative seal of एष धर्मः सनातनः ‘This
is the old tradition’, as was given to the genuinely old verses. That is why
even after the particular adverse times, for which these bans on crossing
Attock or the sea were originally designed, had passed off and more
favourable times prevailed, inasmuch as when the Hindu military might
under the Peshwas and Ranjit Singh was powerful enough not only to cross
Afghanistan but even attack Persia, this anti-national blind faith in those
bans, however, did not vanish. It was still boulking the credulous Hindu
Society with the fear of committing a sin in crossing Attock. That means
even when the once beneficial religious tradition had grown harmful to the
nation, the Hindu Society was not prepared to give it up immediately for
fear of the religious injunction. Even when to break that tradition would
have definitely proved greatly advantageous to the nation and holy from the
religious point of view, the blind faith in the old tradition that to break the
old custom was to commit a sin was still maintained. It is, therefore, the sea,
एष धर्मः सनातनः that the modern writers of smritis affixed to these later
interpolations, which acted as a bugbear, that played the greatest mischief.
537. Take for instance, the ban on seafaring! Had these writers of smritis
of later times specifically mentioned that in old ‘Krit yug’, our Arya nation
was mighty enough to cross the (seven) seas and rule over other islands and
archipelagos, that even up to the time of Rajendra Chola, we were the lords
of the three seas (त्रिसमुद्राधीश) and that, as such, crossing the seas was
essential for the spread of our religion and empire and was holy, but as the
naval power and the lordship of the seas had now been unfortunately lost,
crossing the seas and going into the enemy land in the helpless humble way,
was highly injurious to our nation, and so sinful, and that it was, therefore,
banned till we regained that lordship of the seas. Had they but said so in so