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

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

many words! युग हासानुरूपतः should really be construed as
शक्तिहासानुरूपतः ‘because of the loss of might.’ The bugbear of
एषधर्मः सनातनः should be truly held up only to that extent. Had (once
again we repeat) the writers of Smritis of that time announced this clearly,
the tremendously harmful consequences of these bans on crossing Attock
and the seas, which the nation had to suffer, could have been avoided to a
large extent.
538. But because the new precepts about the various bans on crossing
Attock and the seas and others, which were really introduced in the chapter
on कलिवर्ज्य things by the new religious lawgivers of later days, were
published under the name of the old writers of smritis, they were to remain
in force till the end of the कलियुग
(Kaliyug), i.e. permanently. Although, later on, breaking these bans itself
would have proved advantageous to the Hindus, and although the Hindus
had become strong enough to break them, it was impossible that the
credulous Hindu Society would ever have been prepared to break them till
the doomsday
प्रलयकाल (the end of कलियुग), because of the specific Smriti order
‘these five should be abandoned in Kaliyuga’ (क्लौपंच विवर्जयेत् )
Again, when did the (कलियुग) Kaliyug begin? How long was it to last?
And when was it to end? And after its end, when was the Age of Truth
(सत्ययुग) to commence once again? The different opinions held on these
points by many of our religious lawgivers made the confusion worse
confounded.
The Christian Religious offensive against the Hindus!
539. In paragraph 399 of this book, is mentioned the antiquity of the first
Hindu contacts with the Christians. According to the Christian mythology,
when in the first century A.D. the Christian religion began to be preached in
Syria, the very Jews who had crucified Jesus of Nazareth began to persecute
these handful of Christians. At that very time, some of the Christians, who
knew the way to India, fled in groups to seek shelter with the Hindu King of
Malabar Zamorin (the corrupt form of Samudriya). As a matter of fact, that
Hindu King ought not to have unconditionally allowed these alien people to

land on his sea-coast. But being afflicted by the disease of the morbidly
erroneous conception of virtues, that Hindu king offered shelter to those
Syrian Christians, and allocated a separate tract for their habitation. He even
went to the length of offering a copper-plate (ताम्रपट) inscription
recognizing their equality of right as a separate caste in the gram-panchayat
(town-council). But, later on, when these Syrian-Christians came to know
that even if the Hindus were forced merely to eat or drink with them, they
would be polluted and could become Christians, these ancient Syrian
Christians made an inauspicious start of the spread of Christianity in India,
whereas during the first Christian century (1st Century A.D.), not a trace of
Christianity could be found in England itself, in India, Hindus had already
been begun to be forcibly baptized and made Christians! (It is worthwhile
for every Hindu to read the history of the spread of Christianity in those
days. Moreover, it seems that the customs and codes of conduct that were
likely to facilitate the enemy in the work of proselytization, were firmly
rooted in us as the basic religious conduct even as far back as the first
century A.D. But we will leave this topic alone for want of space at our
disposal, and because it has little bearing upon the subject in hand.
540. However, we should like to refer to one pregnant instance here. On
seeing that a number of Hindu people in a town used to bathe in a holy lake,
some of those Syrian-Christian missionaries thought that even here, they
could try the device of polluting and Christianizing the Hindus, who
considered themselves polluted by merely eating food or drinking water
with the Christians. With this intention, these Syrian Christian missionaries
stealthily went to big lakes where Hindu people used to go in large numbers
for a bath and for carrying drinking water home. They bathed there along
with all and drank its water. Then, after some days, these very missionaries
themselves declared loudly in their congregations, “O you Hindus! We are
Christians, the followers of Jesus! We are not Hindus! We have been
bathing in your lakes along with you. After worshipping our Christian god,
we drink the holy water of the Christian religion and have been giving you
the same water all these days and you drank it devoutly. As per your Hindu
religion, whichever Hindu drinks the Christian water becomes a Christian
for life. This is your religious injunction, so you all have become Christians.
That your other brethren may not be deceived, we pious people are
publishing this truth!’ This news spread among the Christians and the
Hindus of several villages in no time. There was a great havoc everywhere!

All those Hindus became impure and so they began to be boycotted. In the
usual way, all those villages and towns in course of time, were socially
ostracized and became Christian villages and towns!
541. Now we shall cite just for fun—but fun that kills—another incident,
showing how all the human races at that time were fanatics in the extreme.
541A. The early Syrian Christian migrants to India were also divided into
different sects. They vied with one another as to which of them
disseminated the Christian doctrine more truly in foreign countries. So the
sects other than the one that had Christianized Hindu villages, protested
against the latter and out of malice, informed the superior religious
authorities in Europe that sect had converted the simple and foolish Hindu
to Christianity by abominable lies and deception, and collected
contributions, but had never preached any Christian doctrines, as such.
Therefore, they pleaded, that the number of the converts should not be
taken into account, and that they should be stopped from damaging the
prestige of the Christian propagandists. Because of the incessant protests of
these other Christian sects, those Hindu converts to Christianity had for a
long time no legal status as Christians, although they thought themselves to
be such, and their subscriptions to the church were not accepted, nor were
they allowed entrance into the church. In the end, the knotty problem
seemed to have been solved by way of sumptuous subscriptions. For, after
some days, a directive was received from Europe that all the Hindu converts
were now to be called Christians and subscriptions from all of them were
necessarily to be collected. Later on, all the Christian missionaries, to
whatever sect they belonged, declared it to be their religious duty to convert
the Hindus not only by hook or by crook or by sly means, but even by force
and armed force. Naturally, the elementary ways of conversion like making
the Hindus eat or drink with the Christians, were beyond all range of
dispute and doubt.
542. Thereafter, the Syrian and other Christians fell out in their own
country, and there were fierce battles fought amongst the various Christian
sects. Therefore, for two or three centuries, thereafter, the work of the
Christian missionaries in India had practically stopped. But one thing must
be remembered in this context, that because there was no attempt
whatsoever on the part of the Hindus to reconvert the Christianized Hindus
(Indian Christians), the latter kept on calling themselves Christians and
ceased to have any relation whatsoever with the Hindus.

543. In this brief account, one great proselytizing movement in the
     fifteenth century deserves some slight reference. That is the rigorous
     proselytizing movement carried on by the Portuguese missionaries after the
     passing of Gomantak into the Portuguese hands, and the opening of the
     centres of Christian propaganda on the Malabar coast. Their first energetic
     and determined archbishop to convert the Hindus by means of any horrible
     atrocities was Saint Xavier, who came to the land of Gomantak by about
     A.D. 1540. After moving heaven and earth for the spread of Christianity (of
     course in his horrible way), he wrote several letters to the Emperor of
     Portugal about the obstacles in his way of proselytization.
544. In one of his letters to the Portuguese King, he complains that the
     Portuguese officers in India, in spite of the fact that they were Christians
     themselves, irreverently set at naught, his orders in respect of the
     propagation of their faith. They were entirely given to lustful pleasures and
     a life of luxury, and were always on the lookout for every means to grow
     rich. Money was their God. To the service of the true God, to which the
     missionaries like himself had dedicated their lives, those officers, never did
     lend any helping hand. “The Second necessity for the Christians”, he wrote
     in his letter addressed from Amboina (Moluccas) to D. Joao III, King of
     Portugal on May 16, 1545, “is that your Majesty establish the Holy
     Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law
     and according to the Mohamedan sect, without any fear of God or shame of
     the world. And since there are many, who are spread all over the fortress,
     there is the need of the Holy Inquisition and of many preachers.” In one of
     his letters to the Society at Rome, he wrote, “If it were not for the
     opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion
     of Jesus Christ.” These Brahmins were alleged to hinder the progress of the
     Christian proselytizing movement. While the Christian missionaries went
     on converting thousands of Hindus to Christianity, these ‘wily’ Brahmins
     were found to be secretly taking them all to the banks of the Mandvi river
     and bluffed them into bathing in the river; after reciting some verses, in
     order to wash off all sins of being converted to Christianity, they were
     declared to be original Hindus. Thus, with these and various other blatant
     lies, these Brahmins were alleged to be purifying a number of Hindu
     converts to Christianity. In spite of all attempts to intimidate and terrorise
     these Brahmins, they were said to be carrying on their activities
     nonchalantly. Xavier complains that the Portuguese officers in India did not

inflict on these Brahmins such severe punishments, as he would have liked
them to do.
545. Tired of these incessant complaints of the Christian missionaries like
St. Xavier, the Portuguese Emperor issued stern orders to his Governors and
other officers, that they should not neglect help in any way in the sacred (?)
cause of the spread of Christianity, otherwise their whole properly would be
confiscated. Even then not satisfied, St. Xavier went on complaining against
the Brahmins. He, nevertheless, gloated at the tremendous success his
proselytizing efforts had achieved. At the very sight of a Christian
missionary, Hindu villages were taken alright and people there were said to
be running away helfer skelter, for most severe were the measures taken
against those of the Hindus, who did not court Christianity. Let alone the
common Hindu villagers, even the high priests of big Hindu temples, the
heads of Hindu monasteries and the rich in the cities, were all put into
prisons and were subjected to so much physical torture, that the priestly
class at many places is said to have made good their escape to places
outside Goa, carrying their sacred idols with them. “Whenever I hear of any
act of idolatrous worship”, wrote St. Francis Xavier to the Society at Rome
in 1543 A.D. “I go to the place with a large band of these children, who
very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse, than he
has lately received of honour and worship from his parents, relations and
acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down,
break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about and,
in short, heap on them every possible outrage.” He further wrote to the
same society at Rome from Cochin on the 27th Jan, 1545, “When all are
baptized, 1 order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all
the idols to be broken into pieces. “The cruelties’, writes a Goan Historian,
J.C. Barreto Miranda, which in the name of religion of peace and love this
tribunal (of Inquisition) practised in Europe, were carried to even greater
excesses in India.... Every word of their’s (of the Inquisitors) was a sentence
of death, and at their slightest nod, was moved to terror the vast population
spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands and
who, on the most frivolous pretexts, could have been clapped for all time in
the deepest dungeons or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the
pyre.” The harrowing atrocities of St. Xavier and his successors on the
Hindus of his and later dates, cannot be described here for want of space.

546. In all the provinces in north India, the Hindus in general had to bear
     the brunt of the Muslim religious persecution only. But the Hindus to the
     South of Vindhyadri right up to Rameshwaram, had to suffer such horrible
     persecution not only from the five independent Muslim states, then ruling in
     the Deccan, but also from the even fiercer Portuguese, whose brutal
     treatment of the Hindus in order to force them to swear allegiance to the
     Christian faith, seems to have no parallel. Whoever wishes to understand
     the whole harrowing story should read [‘Os Hindus De Goa Republica
     Portuguesa’, by Dr. Antonio Norohna]. Although many great and small
     volumes of histories describe the horrible religious persecution of the
     Hindus by these Portuguese missionaries, before which the Muslim
     atrocities pale into insignificance, this book is particularly mentioned
     because the writer Dr. Antonio Norohna happened to be a judge of the
     Portuguese High Court in Goa. The Portuguese happily have the honest
     habit of preserving all the favourable and unfavourable documents
     regarding their history, right from the ancient to the modern times, and it is
     their ancient tradition to make all these available for study to any interested
     scholar. Naturally, he got every facility to read all those documents and
     books thoroughly, completely and publicly. That this Portuguese judge of
     the High Court should write this book after thoroughly studying all the
     documents, including the original letters of the then ruling Portuguese
     Emperor, the Portuguese Christian missionaries at that time in India, and
     the then Pope of Rome, deserves the special merit of this book!
547. Besides this book of Dr. Antonio Norohna, one is also recommended
     to read ‘The History of Reconversion in Gomantak in Marathi’. It was
     written under the supervision of the late Shree Masurkar Maharaj, who
     reconverted more than ten thousand Hindus, formerly made Christian under
     great coercion. The present book ‘Six Glorious Epochs’ is not really a
     history of India but a critical treatise, so the detailed account of this
     Portuguese religious persecution and forcible conversion of Hindus, cannot
     be given here at length. It is enough to say that the detailed discussion
     (which has here been recorded in the earlier chapters) of the thousand-year-
     old unprecedented and bitter Hindu-Muslim war since the invasion of Sindh
     by the Muslims, and the suicidal consequences of the various harmful and
     anti-national bans self-imposed by the Hindus on eating, drinking, touching,
     intermarrying and especially, that on re-purification and reconversion of the
     polluted Hindus, and many other foolish religious concepts of the Hindus of

the time, is applicable, almost word-by-word to the various acrimonious
battles of the Hindus with the Portuguese, after their arrival in India and the
Christian missionaries in general, and the Christian nations also.
548. It must also be remembered here that at this very time, the Arab and
the Christian nations established their rule over the South Sea (the Indian
Ocean). They attacked our old Hindu-Buddhist states, that had spread far
and wide up to Indo-China and deprived millions of Hindus of their
religion, causing the Hindus, indirectly, to fetter themselves with the new
shackles of the ban on sea voyage. This not only worsted the Hindu political
and religious authority, but caused a great loss to them of their grand
aspiration for the naval empire and foreign trade. They lost their whole
navy and naval trade. Not only did the ship-building industry of the Hindus
perish, but to maintain such seafaring naval force itself became sinful.
Hindu religion and Hindu nation became literally narrow-minded because
of its own blunders. Even if any daring Hindu tried to break this shell of
narrow-mindedness on the Eastern, Western and Southern oceans, there was
the prohibitive placard “समुद्रयातुः स्वीकार - कलौ पंच
विवर्जयेत्” — This was inviolable.
549. Heretofore, we have mentioned only some of the chosen events,
violent or non-violent, regarding the Muslim-Christian two-fold political
and religious armed aggression against the Hindus, and the way in which
they faced it, and even of the revenge that the Hindus also took of those
atrocities and humiliations during this violent thousand year-old Hindu-
Muslim war. They can easily show according to the ‘स्थाली पुलाक
न्याय’
(judging cooked rice by testing one cooked grain only), the enormity of
the struggle.
550. Truly speaking, while religious leaders like Shankaracharya
Vidyaranyaswami, national heroes like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Durgadas
Rathod Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur and saints and sages like
Ramanand, Shree Chaitanya and others gave the lead in carrying on
counter-offensives on the religious front by individual or mass conversions,
the Hindu society as a whole ought to have rocked the skies by effecting
unceasing mass conversions of the Muslim men and women to Hinduism
and reconversion of Hindu converts, who had fallen victim to the violence

or guile of the enemy. They should have thrown to the winds, the old
traditional views and customs. They ought to have made it the religion of
the day!
550A. The Hindus were not averse to idolatory. Many of the Hindu seats
and many of the Hindu religious tenets had been established by great
personalities, and the Hindu society as a whole, had recognized them and
adapted them to the framework of their religious code, at least so far as
they concerned their followers. In their own individual capacity, the
followers of those particular religious heroes, obeyed those particular codes
of conduct. But the otherwise, highly idolatrous Hindu society did not
follow these new idols—the new heroes—who effected individual and
mass conversions and reconversions, carried on equally violent religio-
political counter-offensives. They avenged the humiliation and persecution
of the Hindu women on the Muslim women by similar treatment. The
national heroes, who did all this, have all along been highly honoured and
worshipped as idols among the Hindus, yet the way they showed as the
most suitable for the age was not actively and enthusiastically followed,
after they had passed away. As soon as those heroes died, their particular
followers relegated to oblivion their practical lessons of violent or non-
violent religious counter-aggression and their teaching in this respect. Why,
while the particular sects of Chaitanya and others have been still alive so
far as the other aspects of their teachings are concerned, and their
eulogistic biographies like the भक्ति विजय have been written and read
most devoutly, not the slightest mention of the armed revenge these very
heroes took against the Muslims is to be found in them. Does it not sound
very strange? Nor is any heroic ballad seen to have been composed on their
counter-aggression or on their mass reconversions by any of the minstrels
or bards or ‘Charans’ of those days! The Hindu society in general felt no
urgency of handing down to the later generations, the anecdotes and
legends of those heroic deeds.
551. FOR DEEP DOWN, THE MODERN HINDU MIND IS
TOLERANT, WHICH IN THE VULGAR MEANS SHAMELESS OR
CALLOUS!
THE MODERN-MOST EVENT OF THOSE TIMES, WHICH LENDS
THE STRONGEST HISTORICAL PROOF AND SUPPPORT TO ALL
THE STATEMENTS AND REMARKS THAT HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED
SO FAR IN THE EARLIER CHAPTERS OF THIS BOOK.

552. Whatever instances we have quoted of the Hindu religious counter-
     aggressions so far in this chapter are, of course, only exceptions,
     considering the many centuries of the Hindu-Muslim epic war. They were
     inadequate attempts to patch up the shattered firmament. But it is because
     some Hindus performed brave deeds, befitting the valour of the Hindu
     nation, of retaliation to the Muslims on the religious front, that the Hindu
     side was not completely overthrown. The Muslim enemy always feared that
     even the Hindus also could avenge religious persecution on occasions. If
     without losing any time, the whole Hindu society had adopted the same
     military strategy on the religious front as these exceptions of Hindu heroes
     did in launching counter-offensive, not a single Muslim could have
     remained as a Muslim in this country—at least at that time. This, we have
     often shown in earlier chapters of this book.
553. But then why didn't all the other Hindus dare do so? Why were they
     afraid? Why did they feel it to be against their Hindu religion itself, to
     launch such armed counter-offensive against the Muslims? Why did they
     come to consider the various bans on repurification, sea voyage, eating and
     drinking and others, as the true religious codes of conduct for the Hindus?
     The answer to all these questions—the justification of their conduct—the
     Hindus of those times offererd, was that such an armed retaliation would
     not have been beneficial to the best interests of the Hindus, nor did it
     become the Hindu civility—Hindu culture! They meant to say that in those
     times of repeated terrific Muslim onslaughts if the Hindu kings and society
     had reconverted their unfortunate brethren, who were converted to Islam, or
     would have launched counter-attacks on the religious front and again, as we
     have suggested, converted the Muslim men and women to Hinduism, the
     Muslims would have been still more enraged and again-and-again in their
     fresh attacks, they would have wrecked far more appalling vengeance on
     the Hindus. It was this fear, they said, that prompted the Hindus to accept,
     as an exceptional code of conduct suitable for the adverse circumstances,
     those various bans and the morbidly perverted concept of virtues, which
     amounted really to abject surrender.
     553A. So, in order to refute these and other illogical arguments, and to
     support our arguments and opinions and the various references we have
     made in the foregoing discourse, we shall cite another event, which will go
     to prove conclusively our inference that the HINDUS HAD THE ABILITY
     AND STRENGTH TO LAUNCH ARMED COUNTER-OFFENSIVES

EVEN ON THE RELIGIOUS FRONT BUT THEY HAD NOT THE WILL
TO DO SO!
554. That event is the Maratha war with the Muslims in the South, that
destroyed Tipu Sultan!
❑
.

Tipu Sultan, The Savage
555. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the Maratha Empire
had become so expansive and so powerful as to have brought about the de
facto overthrow of the Moghul Empire at Delhi. The Hindu power had no
Muslim rival state to oppose it effectively throughout the length and breadth
of India, right from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari. But at this very time,
Hyder Ali, an ordinary Muslim soldier, had been gradually rising to power
in the army of the Hindu State of Mysore and had already become quite
indispensable. Even after the sad experience of centuries together how the
very Muslim servants, in whom the Hindu kings had placed complete
confidence and whom they had brought to prosperity and power, had
betrayed those very Hindu masters most treacherously ever since the times
of Mahmud of Ghazni and Ghori, this Hindu King of Mysore committed the
same blunder. Because of his usual artless, and almost unwise attitude of
equality to all religions, which was imbibed assiduously amongst the
Hindus in general, King Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar or more particularly his
Chief Minister, Nanjeraj, entrusted the supreme military command to this
fanatical Muslim adventurer, Hyder Ali. The consequences were inevitable.
Hyder Ali set aside Chikka Krishnaraj Vodyar, with a little pension and
usurped the throne of Mysore. He once marched against the Marathas also
but was so sorely beaten by them on the battlefield that he dared not give it
a second trial again. He had also once attacked the English at Madras
successfully. But as we are not concerned here with the other activities of
his, it would be sufficient simply to add that after his death in 1782, he was
succeeded to the throne of the Hindu State of Mysore by his equally
unscrupulous adventurer of a son, Tipu Sultan-1.
556. As soon as he came to the throne, Tipu wiped out even the name of
the original Hindu King and proclaimed himself the Sultan of a Moslem
state. Tipu was the last of the Muslim rulers to establish a new independent
state, and style himself a Sultan during the millennial Hindu-Muslim war.
557. True to the usual Muslim tradition, Tipu performed his first duty as a
Sultan of announcing publicly in the very first session of his court (Darbar),
that he would see to it that all the kafirs were made Muslim willy-nilly. He
commanded all the Hindus in his state to embrace Islam. He ordered his
various officers of high and low ranks in every city, town and village to

convert every Hindu to Islam. If the Hindus did not willingly take to Islam,
they were to be forced to do so, or else the men were to be slaughtered and
the women were to be distributed as slaves among the Muslims.
558-560. This campaign by Tipu of pollution and proselytization of the
Hindus was so thorough and ruthless, and it was carried to such vast
dimensions, that there was universal wailing and a sense of unimaginable
horror throughout the Hindu community in the State. Not only the soldiers
in his army but even the Mullah-Maulvis in the meanest of villages too,
with the Muslim hooligans and ruffians to help them, began a systematic
persecution of the Hindus! At a later date, Tipu invaded Malabar and at the
first stroke, converted a hundred thousand Hindus in that one single coastal
district. Then overtaking the Karnataka, he even marched on the Maratha
territory. Millions of Hindus from Dharwar to Travancore were horror-
stricken, and hundreds of men and women from all castes and sects of the
Hindu society feeling thoroughly incapable of facing its armed attack of the
Muslims, preferred death by drowning themselves in the Krishna and the
Tungabhadra to all the indignities and atrocities of Muslim vandalism.
Hundreds of others leapt into the fire but did not become Muslims!
Tipu’s Arrogant Proclamation!
561. Puffed up by the speedy success of his atrocious aggressions upon
the Hindus and diabolically elated at their miserable plight, Tipu once
proudly declared in his court that his campaign of mass conversion of the
Hindus was accomplished beyond all expectations. On one occasion, he
said fifty thousand Hindus in his kingdom were converted hardly within
twenty-four hours! No other Muslim Sultan before him, he proudly stated,
could have achieved that stupendous success, but that by the grace of Allah,
he had been able to perform that amazing task of the spread of Islamic faith
and the total annihilation of the kafirs!
562. In order to carry on this prodigious task, Tipu formed a special
division of his army, which surpassed all other Muslim soldiers in enormity
and vandalism. He manned it by the pick of the bitterest enemies of the
Hindus and most lovingly called them his own sons. Whoever of those
loving sons of his did some exceptionally brutal act of ravaging Hindu
women, of forcibly converting Hindu families, of plunder and arson, or of
wholesale massacre was rewarded with the youngest and most beautiful of
the thousands of Hindu girls captured from different parts of the State.

563. The whole of the Muslim world was, no doubt, overcome with the
     highest gratitude to Tipu Sultan for his unprecedented success in the violent
     propagation of the Muslim faith. He was honoured as Gazi, the hero of the
     Islamic faith by his Muslim brethren all over. Naturally, the whole of the
     Muslim community was, thus, a party to this fanatical persecution of the
     Hindus by Tipu. Especially, the whole of the Muslim society from
     Karnataka to Travancore, which had collectively but actively participated in
     these artrocities, richly deserved punishment from the Hindu standpoint.
     Now at Poona
564. Now on hearing the piteous cries and heart-breaking screams of the
     persecuted Hindus of Mysore, there arose a violent surge of fury at Poona,
     the capital of the Maratha Empire, which was duty-bound to defend
     Hinduism. The Maratha diplomats and warlords decided forthwith to invade
     Mysore in order to crush this new demon of a Sultan in South. The Chief
     Administrator of the Peshwas, Nana Phadnavis issued an instant order to all
     the available Maratha chieftains to march on Tipu from all sides with huge
     armies.
     War with Tipu
565. Tipu was extremely annoyed to learn that the Maratha forces were
     proceeding against him. So, before the main Maratha battalions could arrive
     to their rescue, he maliciously attacked Nargund and Kittur in quick
     succession. These two very small Hindu states were very close to Mysore
     and far detached from the Maratha territory.
566. Tipu hated all the Hindus, yet more vehemently the Brahmins, who
     were foremost in trying to kindle in the Hindu Society, a burning pride for
     their religion and self-respect. He had reached the limit of his brutality in
     persecuting the Brahmins more than any other caste of the Hindus. The
     great historian Sardesai writes: 'Brahmins were singled out for special
     indignities by Tipu.' The rulers of Nargund and Kittur were both Brahmins
     and both of them had spitefully declined his demand for immediate
     surrender. Furiously, therefore, did Tipu march first on Nargund and then on
     Kittur at the head of a very powerful army. The ruler of Nargund Bhave
     fought bravely to the bitterest end but for want of any timely assistance
     from Poona, his small army was easily vanquished. The moment the city of
     Nargund fell, Tipu, like a hungry wolf, rushed straight to the ruler's palace,
     his Muslim army burning and plundering the citizens and their houses.
     There he arrested the ruler Bhave himself and his valiant minister Pethe,