भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)
Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History by Veer Savarkar
स्वातंत्र्यवीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर द्वारा
Lord Cornwallis at the battle of Shreerangpattam against Tipu, those about
his high-level discourses on war-moves and treaties, down to the letters
describing the raids of robbers and pilgrimages of devout pilgrims, letters of
(Travels and those giving market rates, and also those of Shankaracharya
complaining about the ransacking of his ‘Ashram’!
585. But no evidence can be generally found in all this heap of documents
to show if anyone was yearning to avenge the Muslim atrocities and their
religious victory over the Hindus. No Hindu commander, nor a small troop
of soldiers, nor even a group of men, is ever reported to have drawn swords
to rescue the converted Hindu women and to cut down the Muslim
miscreants. No one is reported to have felt any shame at the humiliation of
these unfortunate women and at the Hindu failure to rescue them. These
hundreds and hundreds of letters show a lamentable want of realization—
not to speak of any anxiety about it on the part of the Hindu society, that
day by day, they were losing territory and power so far as their religion was
concerned. Howsoever strange and sad it might appear, the fact cannot be
gainsaid. Not a word seems to have been breathed or recorded about the
retaliation of the Muslim atrocities—let alone its actual execution!
586. We may set aside the whole heap of contemporary documents, but we
cannot help referring to one letter of Haripant Phadke in particular. The said
letter was written to Nana Phadnavis, informing him of the two sons of
Tipu, taken as hostages by the Marathas and the English, to ensure the
prompt execution of the terms of the treaty, which was signed by Tipu after
his defeat. Writes Haripant Phadke, perhaps casually, to show how they had
brought Tipu to such a miserably low condition:
586A. “Lord Cornwallis sent the two sons of Tipu to me. When I saw
them, they pleaded they were hungry. I sent them to a neighbouring tent and
ordered that they should be well fed. Then after some time, they were
returned to the English camp of Lord Cornwallis!”
586B. The incident referred to in this letter and the one we are shortly
going to quote here, with reference to the Battle of Kharda hold as it were,
to a searching analysis under the X-ray, the perverted sense of virtues,
which had permeated, through centuries, to the marrow of the Hindu
society, rendering it slovenly and imbecile, and insensible to all sorts of
shameful humiliation.
587-588. Haripant Phadke’s genial treatment of Tipu’s two sons reminds
us of another incident, which by contrast, will give us a practical illustration
of our discussion of the perverted Hindu sense of virtues in paragraphs 405
to 471.
588A. In the first or the second decade of the seventeenth century, the
tenth Guru of our Hindu-Sikhs, Dharmveer Shree Govind Singh found it
impossible to continue the war with the Moghuls. He was at last besieged in
the fort of Chamkaur along with his sons. Overcome with terror, some of
his sworn disciples from the Sikh army conspired to desert their Guruji,
renounce their Sikh religion and left the fort secretly. Two elder sons of the
Guruji were killed before his eyes in the battle. At last, in the face of such
grave danger, the Guruji advised all to leave battle and run for life,
wherever they could. Finding a suitable opportunity, he made good his own
escape. But in that confusion, two of his sons, of a tender age of 12 or
below, missed the way and fell into the Muslim hands. How did the
Muslims treat them according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE?
589. The Letter of Haripant Phadke referred to above shows how kindly
and sympathetically, according to THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS CODE, the
Marathas treated the two sons of Tipu, when they came into their hands.
590. On the contrary, as soon as the brave cubs of Guru Govind Singh fell
into the Muslim hands, they were taken straight to their war council and
asked: “Are you willing to be Muslims? If so, you will be given your life
and everything you want. Otherwise nothing!” The children answered: “We
won’t be Muslims even if our life is not spared!” Immediately, the diabolic
Muslim justice decreed that the two small children be forthwith built alive
in a brickwall! While they were thus being built in, they were asked, as
each brick was placed on the wall, “Do you become Muslims?” The two
brave Hindu cubs would reply again and again: “No, we won’t be
Muslims!’ The last brick was laid on the heads of both the young martyrs
and they ceased to breathe! Then today, a true Hindu enters the vicinity of
that scene of martyrdom, he will very likely hear the words reverberating
the whole atmosphere there: “I won’t become a Muslim: nay, not at all! I
am a Hindu, I am a Sikh! I bravely court death!”
591. Supposing that by an adverse turn of events, two children of our
Peshwas were to fall in the hands of Tipu or any Muslim ruler—what then?
He would not have fed as the Hindu-hearted Haripant Phadke did, the two
tender-aged children and returned them to the Peshwa! Such a behaviour
would have been considered sacrilegious and cowardly, according to the
Muslim religious belief; they would most probably have been built up alive
in brick-walls or else would have been crushed under an elephant’s foot.
The Hindus, on the other hand, would not have avenged such brutality with
any hyper-brutal retaliation, even if they had the strength and opportunity to
do so. For, the virus the perverted sense of virtues had been flowing through
their arteries and veins for centuries together.
592. It should be made clear at this very stage, that the ethics of war, which
demanded that a charioteer must fight with another charioteer only, the
sword should meet another sword alone, that the armed warrior ought not to
fight with an unarmed one, till he has been armed equally, that a fallen
senseless warrior was never to be attacked till he had regained
consciousness etc. etc., was perhaps quite suitable for the ancient times
before Mahabharat. For both the contending parties obeyed the same set of
rules: both worshipped the same ethics of war. The Pandawas themselves
had violated, at the instance of Lord Krishna, many of these chivalrous rules
of war! But the Hindus of these middle ages forgot the lesson taught by the
Bhagwat Geeta, of giving due consideration to the time, place and person or
persons concerned, while obeying these rules of war. They, on their own part
kept on fighting the diabolic Muslim ways of war with the same old—
originally sane and civilized, but now outmoded and so highly suicidal—
tactics in war.
592A. Besides this incident of Tipu’s two sons, we should like to cite
another—equally shameful for the Marathas and the Hindus, inasmuch as it
offers another illustration of the perverted sense of virtues of the Hindus of
those times! It happened during the Battle of Kharda (1795 A.D.) against
the Nizam, the last restlessly writhing remnant of the Muslim power at
Delhi! The Nizam was at that time completely at the mercy of the Marathas;
he would have been wiped out of existence and saved all further trouble,
but for the shameless exhibition of this perverted sense of virtues, by the
Marathas!
593. The Maratha forces with their excellent strategic moves had encircled
the Nizam at such a desolate and dry place, that his vast army could get no
food or water. The scarcity of drinking water was so acute that hundreds of
Muslim soldiers drank stinking water from dirty pools, not fit even for
animals. Nizam-Ali himself was almost in tears. And at this most critical
moment, the big Maratha guns began to rend the skies with their
thundering.
- But at this most crucial moment, the Maratha war cabinet was seized
with such a paroxysm of their age-old incurable disease of the perverted
sense of virtues, viz. misplaced generosity to withhold the strokes and allow
time to even the inveterate fainting enemy to regain consciousness, that had
it lasted a little longer, the scales of war would have turned against the
Hindus themselves and the Muslims would never have failed to annihilate
them completely. At a time when the Nizam himself, the chief enemy of the
Marathas, was dying of thirst and when the Marathas luckily had the best
opportunity of capturing him alive and of destroying his whole army, the
Peshwa, Sawai Madhavrao, was inspired with the grand idea that the true
greatness of a warrior was to show mercy to the downcast enemy. He,
therefore, sent in consultation with his war-cabinet, a very valuable supply
of water enough for the Nizam and his royal family from his own stock of
drinking water, which was preserved with no less difficulty. And this was
done in the thick of the fray—quite consistently with the maxim: क्षमा
वीरस्य भूषणम (Forgiveness is the virtue of the brave). [Remember for a
contrast ‘The Battle of Samugad or Shambhugad’ (1658 A.D,) and the siege
of Agra by Aurangzeb—Shahjahan was brought to his knees by cutting off
the water supply to the fort of Agra.]
A fine illustration of self-contradiction! - A common belief seems to prevail that the Hindus strictly banned
any reconversion of Muslimized Hindus or any conversion of born
Muslims, because they dreaded fresh outrages from the Muslims in India
and perhaps new horrible invasions of foreign Muslims, resulting in untold
monstrocities and consequent horrible retribution. - It is purposely to show how erroneous, unrealistic and wholly
improbable this belief is, that we have quoted the episode the Maratha war
with Tipu, which provides ample historical evidence to support all the
points we have made so far. - Setting aside that episode of the war with Tipu for a while, it is
enough to pose a question: If at all the Hindus were so terribly and
incessantly obsessed with the dread of Muslim retaliation, they would have
offered no resistance, however slight it might have been! They would never
have counter-attacked the Muslims on the political and military fronts and
won at great odds. For, it is only in those Hindu states, which the Muslims
conquered, that such religious persecution of the Hindus was, or would
have been, possible for the Muslims. If at all the Hindus were to dread
anything, they should have dreaded the Muslim armed political aggression
first. But barring minor incidents and looking at this gigantic struggle in one
broad sweep, the reader can clearly see that in order to protect their states
and religion, the Hindus had fought grim and determined battles right from
the times of Mahmud of Ghazni's and Ghori's demoniacal raids. They lost
their states, they won their states! Defeat and victory, victory and defeat!
The fortunes of the fields changed in quick succession! But for more than
seven centuries, the Hindus kept on fighting the Muslims throughout the
whole of India, fought every inch of it and finally brought the mighty
Muslim enemy to his knees in abject surrender! To say that these Hindus
would have ever cared a two-pence for the fiercer rage of the Muslim
revenge, is in itself, a fine illustration of self-contradiction!
598. Of course, the Muslims had never to worry in the least about the
security of their religious domination in India! The Hindus were firm as
regards one thing: never to convert any Muslim, not to counterattack the
sphere of the Muslim religious influence; nor again to harm them in any
way in matters religious; for, all these actions were completely contrary to
the Hindu religious faith! The Muslims had only one anxiety as to how to
spread the Islamic faith incessantly throughout the length and breadth of
India, even if the Hindus had reconquered political power! We have already
discussed at different places in this book, the tremendous loss to the Hindu
nation this Muslim religious aggression had caused. Only two major points
need a brief resume here.
Loss of thirty million Hindus
599. Even in those days, the Hindu society was quite aware of this
numerical loss! But because of their morbid ban on reconversion, no
effective remedy could be found against this drain of its lifeblood. Very like
the invalid patient, meekly bearing the death-pangs of an incurable disease,
the then Hindu world endured this blood-draining, deadly disease!
Loss of Territory!
600. But graver still than this loss of numerical strength, was another: the
permanent loss of the vast territory snatched away by the Muslim religious
incursions, slowly, bit by bit, but steadily, without the knowledge of the
Hindus! THE MUSLIMS THUS SEIZED FAR MORE HINDU LAND
THROUGHOUT INDIA BY CONVERSION THAN THEY DID BY
CONQUESTS!
- For, twenty to thirty million Hindu converts and millions of foreign
Muslims that flocked to India to seek their fortune, settled permanently in
India alone! The land—the cities and towns and particular parts of cities
and towns and villages that were inhabited and were to be inhabited by
these Muslims and their descendants to come in future—were permanently
lost to the Hindus, never to be regained! On these tracts and patches of land
fluttered nonchalantly, the green Muslim bands indicating the unimpeded
sway of the Muslim religious faith all over! The Hindus, and more
particularly the Marathas, wrested away practically all the political power
throughout the whole of India from the Muslims towards the end of this
epic Hindu-Muslim war. Yet the Muslims retained their hold individually or
collectively on the masses and on property too! - Again, as the Muslim population grew rapidly because of polygamy
popular amongst them, and the spread of their religion by conversion, more
and more land was to that extent being gradually but surely occupied by
them and was passing for ever into the Muslim hands. In order to give some
idea of the actual condition, it is enough to say that even after the
establishment of the de facto sovereignty of the Marathas, every little town
or village had a separate part known as Musalmanwada or Musalman
mohalla! Why, even cities like Poona, Satara, Kolhapur, Nagpur in
Maharashtra, Baroda, Devas, Dhar, Indore, Gwalior and Udaypur in Central
India and Jodhpur, Jaipur, Amritsar, Lahore right up to Shreenagar in
Kashmir in the north, each had a separate section exclusively colonized by
thousands of Muslims and known as ‘Muslim-pura’ or ‘Muslim-abadi’. The
Muslims not only dominated these separate sections religiously, but
practically became their owners! - And the fun of it was that this religious domination of the Muslims
and their individual right to that land had been constitutionally and legally
protected by the Hindu kings themselves, giving them equal civil status as
subjects along with the Hindus! Especially, because of open and deep-rooted
enmity between the Hindus and the Muslims in those days, and as change of
religion was then tantamount to change of nationality, all the land that passed
into the Muslim hands, this way or that, was in reality, permanently given
over to the national enemy of the Hindus! - Thus, throughout the whole of India, in every village and town and
city and province, big or small Muslim pockets (Muslimistans) were being
created and fostered right from those days. That again means that from that
time, India was being vivisected unwittingly between two parts: the Hindu
India and the Muslim India!
605. THESE BIG OR SMALL ISLAMISTANS WERE REALLY THE
TIME BOMBS LAID BY THE CONVERT MUSLIM RELIGIOUS
AUTHORITY IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE HINDU POLITICAL
SUPERSTRUCTURE!
606. Yet neither the Hindu rulers, nor the common people, nor even the
historians of the time seem to have apprehended, acutely or even faintly, the
instantaneous or the belated consequences of this tremendous loss of
numbers and territory. For, nobody else has so far tried, as we are doing
here, any bold, lucid and comprehensive historical exposition of this loss of
numbers and territory that the Hindu nation had to suffer because of the
morbid Hindu religious concepts of various bans and their perverted sense
of virtues! If at all there be any such attempt, it is bound to be an exception.
607-608. Moreover, had the Hindus at that time really understood the full
significance of the above-mentioned evil consequences of the Muslim
religion dominance, the Maratha government would have immediately and
definitely launched a counter-religious aggression upon the Islamic faith in
the south, the moment its leader, Tipu, was politically vanquished. For, the
Hindus had never before had such a completely favourable opportunity as
they had it then, to launch such a counter-offensive on the religious front.
Throughout the whole of India, there was left no Muslim power at that time,
which could even so much as think of opposing the Marathas, as we have
already pointed it out, and as our contemporary bard sings in one of his
heroic ballads with evident pride for Hinduism—
जलचर हैदर निजाम इंग्रज रणकरिता थकसे।
ज्यानि पुण्याकडे विलोकिते ते संपत्तिता मुकते॥
[The pirates (meaning the Portuguese), Hyder, the Nizam, the English all
were exhausted fighting (with the Marathas). Whoever looked (with
enmity) at Poona, lost their wealth!]
Devil can be Fought by arch-devil only
609. Suppose, as soon as this propitious time had come, the Maratha
Chieftains such as Bhonsale, Holkar, Patwardhan, Raste and others, who
had fought against Tipu, the Maratha administrators, the Peshwa and the
Chhatrapati, had promulgated, in consultation with the prominent religious
authorities, some such order (if not actually couched in the same words) as
the following:
610. “Just as the valour of the Maratha warriors had trampled under their feet
the Muslim rule of Tipu, in a similar way, in order to bring to the lowest dust
the Muslim religious preponderance under the fiendish Tipu, which has so far
inflicted every sort of brutality and humiliation on the Hindus and to chastise
those guilty of these heinous crimes, our government had decided to attack in
return the Muslims on the religious field.
611. “Faithfully following the interpretation of the religious law and the
religious code of conduct by Shree Shankaracharya Vidyaranyaswami,
whose authority is considered next only to the Very First Shree
Shankaracharya by the whole of the Hindu world, we hereby, for the first
time, propose to break the psychological ban on reconversion, which has
simply paralysed the Hindu society, so far as the retaliation of the tyrannical
Muslim religion is concerned, and we hereby order every single official of
whatever rank to make the necessary arrangements to enforce the strict
observance of the following instructions.
612. “On learning about the forcible conversion of Hindu men and women
in his particular jurisdiction, every village and city-officer shall gather
together all such oppressed Hindus in some rescue camp under the
government protection, and shall attend to all their needs.
613. “Every several Muslim man and woman in every town and village, in
whose house or hut Hindu women, girls and children might be found
slaving as oppressed converts, shall along with the whole family, be
forthwith bettered and thrown into prison, and the miserable Hindu women
and children after being immediately set free, shall be affectionately and
courteously taken to the rescue camps.
614. “Similarly the warriors from Tipu’s select company of the direst
young Muslim scoundrels, whom he fondled as his ‘sons’, shall be fettered
with very heavy shackles wherever they will be found in Maharashtra,
Karnatak or elsewhere and locked in jails, and the fairest young and
innocent Hindu women, who were given away as reward to those Muslim
young rogues from this brigade for their brutal atrocities towards the
Hindus, should all be rescued and sent with all civility to the said rescue
camps.
615. “Finally, a national reconversion week will be announced by a
superior officer, before which all the rescued Hindu converts from the
rescue camps all over the particular region shall be conducted in large
groups under military guard to the holy places adjoining their native places
or to Dharwar or Badami or other places where the oppressive Muslim
armies have been destroyed by the Marathas. At all these places, shall these
oppressed Hindu converts be reconverted to Hinduism en masse. At all
these places, sacrificial fires should be lit and offerings made for the
repurification of all these millions of Hindu converts, and they should all be
received in the Hindu Society ceremoniously with chorus-singing of praises
for the Hindu religion. All those who are likely to be willingly, lovingly and
honourably received by their original families, should be escorted to their
original homes and rehabilitated in those families. But the thousands of
other repurified and reconverted Hindus, who may not find such a loving
reception in their original sub-castes, should all be classed as a new warrior
class in the structure of the Hindu society—अग्निकुल—a fire race
according to the Rajput legend—and all the political and religious
authorities in the land are hereby ordered to concede to them, all rights due
to a Hindu as equitably and justly as the other caste Hindus enjoy.
616. “Then, in order, to reward the meritorious services of the choicest
Maratha warriors in this Hindu-Muslim war, at least as many young and
beautiful Muslim girls should be captured, converted to Hinduism and
presented them, as were the Hindu girls distributed by Tipu amongst the
daredevil warriors of his select brigade.
617. “Thereafter, the thousands of Muslim rascals and scoundrels, who
have, in this Hindu-Muslim war, inflicted harrowing atrocities on the
Hindus, raped Hindu women and girls, have broken holy images of Hindu
gods and goddesses and have demolished their temples, and who will have
been locked as per the above-mentioned order in various prisons, shall be
conducted under strong military guard to the four or five chief cities that
will be signified later on by the Superior Officers. They should, especially,
be taken to Nargund and Kittur—the places where Tipu himself had
inflicted inhuman atrocities on the Hindu men and women with the aid of
his diabolic army, so that Tipu’s devilish acts might be avenged with equal
ferocity and with the harshest punishments meted out to the daredevil
soldiers of his Islamic brigade in the very presence of the afflicted people
there. On the appointed day, during the reconversion week, these hundreds
of Muslim devils should be brought under strong armed guard of soldiers
and cannons to the vast parade grounds and after the charge sheets against
them, indicating their fiendish acts against the Hindus, have been read out
to litem, they should be blown off from cannon-mouth before the joyful
eyes of the thousands of Hindu spectators.
A National Homage to the Hindu Martyrs
618. “In the end, this reconversion week should be concluded with a national
homage to the report of three volleys of guns from every fort and city of
Maharashtra, in honour of the thousands of men and women, who courted
martyrdom by leaping into the rivers like the Krishna or the Tungabhadra or in
some other ways, because they had no other effective means to save their
religion and to escape the direct persecution at the hands of Tipu’s soldiers,
when thousands of them surrounded and blockaded whole towns, carrying on
wholesale conversions with fire and sword.”
The Echoes of Religious Retaliation
619. If at all, the Marathas had dealt such a crushing counter-blow on the
Muslim religious front, the echoes and re-echoes of the guns, thundering
from every fort in Maharashtra, would not have been heard in the valleys of
the Krishna and the Tungabhadra alone; they would also have reverberated
throughout the Gangetic, the Indus, nay, far beyond it, the Vakshu (Oxus)
river-valleys and the whole of the Muslim world. The barest news, that the
Hindus too, had been reconverting the millions of converted Hindus,
breaking away the fetters of the ban on reconversion, would have shocked
the Muslim world far more fiercely than the report of thousands of guns
fired simultaneously, and their very existence would have begun to dwindle.
This is not mere historical guesswork but a guarantee of historical
probability.
620. But this historical probability remained only a probability! The
Hindus never broke the ban on reconversion, nor did they allow it to be
broken. Naturally, the Islamic religious dominance in India could not be
overthrown.
621. The virus of the caste-differences caused by birth had already
permeated the whole blood-system of the Hindu society long before any
Muslim aggressor could come to India. Perpetual Muslim atrocities
aggravated its effects all the more, and the Hindu Society lost its original
susceptibility to change, its expansionism, its ability to absorb newer
elements and its strong inclination to retaliation even in the religious field.
How could the Hindu leaders, then, hit back the Muslim foreigners or
absorb them in their Hindu Society?
- ‘How could a man’, they thought who was a born Muslim, ever
become a true Hindu by merely dipping into the Gangetic waters?’ ‘For’,
they argued, ‘the caste is decided by birth’. - रासभ धुतला महातीर्थामाजीं। नव्हे जैसी तेजी शामकर्ण॥
‘Even as a donkey washed in the holiest of water can never become a
spirited horse...’
How can we then admit these born non-Hindus to our original castes,
merely because a certain scented pigment betokening Hinduism is applied
to their foreheads? Are we to dine with them? And if that person be a
woman, are we to marry her simply because an auspicious kumkum tilak
from a Hindu box is applied to her forehead? And that too openly?
Impossible! Impossible! Irreligious! Irreligious!
623A. Such were the religious ideas of not only the Brahmins and the
Kshatriyas but the Mangs, the Dhors, the Bhils and other so-called ‘low
castes’ and wild tribes too! They considered this to be the only true Hindu
religion. The main principle underlying these ideas of caste-differences was
that whichever Hindu went over to the Muslim fold, willy-nilly—whether by
persuasion or by coercion—was polluted and damned—irrevocably damned
for life—nay, for all his generations to come!
623B. What wonder then, if hundreds of millions of Hindus who,
cherishing such absurd ideas about religious behaviour had stoutly opposed
any reconversion of the oppressed Hindus or of the born Muslims!
The only Fortunate thing was... - The only fortunate thing was that at the beginning of the Muslim
onslaughts on India, no couplet in Anusthup metre was interpolated in some
smriti by some Brihaspati (wiseacre) or another banning territorial
conquests as others were, in respect of bans on food-exchange, inter-caste
marriages, reconversion, sea-faring and many other things! If the forcibly
converted Hindu could not be reconverted to Hinduism, if a man dealing
with a Muslim himself became a Muslim, how could a land or territory
once conquered by the Muslims be again a Hindu land? Whoever tried to
win back that lost kingdom would himself become a Muslim! The land,
however, would never become a Hindu land again! If some learned Hindu
fool had argued this way, and promulgated such a ban on reconquering the
lost territory, the Hindus would have been rendered as absolutely powerless
to overthrow the Muslim political dominance, as they were to overthrow the
Muslim religious ascendancy, because it would have become equally
irreligious, and so impossible, owing to such a ban. And like Afghanistan,
Iran, Babylonia, ancient Egypt, Turkey and Morocco in the far west, India
in the east would also have been completely Muslimized! It would have
become both politically and religiously an Islamistan! That would have
been the last line written about the Hindu History. But India was at least
saved that horrible fate then, and once again was written a new chapter of
the rejuvenation of Hinduism, illuminated by dazzling valour of the Hindu
warriors.
625. The history of India as also of all the parts of the rest of the world,
wherever the Muslims had established religio-political ascendancy, amply
proves that not only those several nations that were incapable of
overthrowing the Muslim religio-political dominance became completely
Muslimized, but even those other non-Muslim nations which smashed the
Muslim political might but left their religious hold untouched, could not
escape the constant horrible pestilence of the Muslim onslaughts. Only five
or six or at the most, ten nations that precipitated the Muslim religious
downfall soon after their political and military defeat and rid themselves of
every single Muslim, could—these and these alone could—free themselves
completely from the Muslim pestilence! For want of space, only one
instance of Spain should suffice to illustrate this point.
Emancipation of Spain from Muslims
626. Simultaneously with their raids on India, the Arabs under the
Omayyads had overrun Spain and had established a powerful Muslim state
there. Naturally, as elsewhere, the Muslims began the religious persecution
and conversion of the Spanish Christians. Countless Christian men and
women were violently and mercilessly converted to Islam at the point of the
sword or killed outright. Later on, after some centuries, when there were
internecine wars amongst the Muslims themselves, the much too oppressed
Christians of Spain rose in revolt against the tyrannical Muslim
Government under one of their own old royal dynasties, and with the help
of a growing Christian nation in France and with encouragement from the
Papal seat of Rome. After many years of bitter warfare during the 11th and
13th centuries, the Spanish Christians delivered most of their country from
the Muslim rule and finally with the conquest of Granada in A.D. 1492,
they wiped out the Muslim power altogether. But as in India so in Spain
too, even after the loss of political power, the Muslims had their firm
religious hold unimpaired on the converted Spanish Christians and the land
they had actually inhabited. Nay, this Muslim religious hold was getting
more and more explosive and terrible, so as to cut asunder the whole of the
Spanish nation at some future date. Those of the Spanish Christians, who
could clearly foresee this impending danger and who had always awaited an
opportunity to wreak their revenge, decided to root out the Muslim religious
influence from Spain, as they did with their political overlordship.
Christians were never fettered as Hindus were by any Religious bans
on food Exchange, Reconversion and so on
627. The task of reconverting the countless Muslimized Christians was,
therefore, so easy as to be readily accomplished, the moment these
Spaniards simply willed it.
The only difficulty was that of the Muslim political and military might. No
sooner was the Muslim army destroyed than the Spanish Christians started
the complete rout of the Islamic faith in one holocaust throughout Spain.
Thousands of Muslimized Christians began to be rebaptized incessantly and
speedily. The sporadic Muslim resistance infuriated the Spanish nation all the
more. The Spanish Government, the Spanish Christian Church and the
Spaniards at large vowed openly that in their country no person calling
himself or herself a Muslim, nor any structure known as a mosque be
allowed to remain unimpaired any longer
628. The newly independent Spanish Government gave an ultimatum that
before an appointed date, every sundry Muslim—man or woman had either
to court Christianity willingly or to leave the country forthwith, with family
and friends, bag and baggage. Whoever failed to do either, after that date was
to be beheaded mercilessly and unhesitatingly.
629. What? A Christian Government order! How atrocious! But it must be
remembered that when the Muslims conquered Spain, they had imposed
their faith far more brutally on the Christian populace there and flooded the
street with Christian blood. Now the Christians were to rewash the streets
with Muslim blood. As soon as the stipulated time elapsed, the Spanish
Christians rose violently against the remaining Muslims at various places
and put everyone of them—man or woman, young or old—to the sword!
The Christian Church of Spain became pure with a Muslim bloodbath. Spain
was rid of the Muslims entirely. And so Spain remained Christian! It was not
turned into another Morocco!!
630. The same fate awaited the Muslims in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria,
Greece and other Christian nations. They all rid their once Muslim-
dominated countries of every single Muslim! ❑
.
12.
A Resume
- The various points that have been discussed at length in the foregoing
chapters, viz. Ch. V to XI of this book, can now be briefly summarized here
into a consistent whole. - In the historic past, India, too, like all other great nations, had been
invaded by the Ionians, Sakas and Huns and other non-Hindu wild people.
But after centuries of violent struggle with them, all the Hindu nations
stamped out their political dominance by smashing their armed might on the
various battlefields and became independent again and again. Moreover, it
converted the millions of the Ionian, Saka and Hun foreigners who settled
down here in various provinces during the years of those hard struggles, and
taught them the Vedic cult, the worship of the Vedic gods and goddesses, and
the Sanskrit civilization and culture, so as to merge them so completely
amongst its own people as to leave not a single trace of their original non-
Hindu races and names behind. - When the unprecedented calamity of the Muslim aggression fell on
India, the Hindus kept on stubbornly fighting the aggressors for over a
thousand years or so, and ultimately shattered the Muslim power as
completely as they did the non-Hindu Saka-Hun empires; and once again,
they established their political independence! Yet, they could not recover
their tremendous loss of numerical strength, which was brought about by the
forcible conversions nor could they regain the Indian areas actually occupied
by the Muslim settlers here, nor even could they Hinduise the Muslims as
completely as they did the Ionian, the Saka, the Hun and other non-Hindus!
Why? - The answer to this main vexing question is chiefly and thoroughly
discussed with adequate historical proofs in chapters V to XI of this book.
The conclusion that one arrives at after evaluating the contemporary events
and circumstances is that as soon as the Muslim rule was overthrown, or was
in the process of being overthrown, neither the Hindus at large, nor the
Hindu rulers ousted the Muslim religious dominance even when proper
opportunities presented themselves, and although they were far more
strongly armed than their Muslim opponents. They did not convert even a
single Muslim to Hinduism by persuasion—let alone by force!
- Had the victorious Hindu nation instantly broken off all bans on food-
exchange, inter-marriages, (re)conversion, seafaring and other refractory
social and religious traditions and reconverted all the Muslims—whether
converted or original—and absorbed them in the then prevailing caste
structure of the Hindu society, of course with due regard for the status and
qualifications of the persons concerned (as they had already done with the
Saka, Hun and other subjugated foreigners, in the by-gone days), like Spain,
India would immediately have been rendered Muslimless! Hindusthan would
have been at that very time, the place of the Hindus in the truest sense of the
term.
636-637. This treatise deals with the Muslim invasions of India during the
period covering over a thousand years from A.D. 700 to A.D. 1800 and the
chain of consequent Hindu-Muslim wars. Naturally, the points raised in this
discussion apply only to the conditions prevailing during that period.
Therefore, while reading such historical dissertations and treatises, the reader
must always bear in mind one important fact that the actions and the codes of
conduct, which are, or seem to be most proper, beneficial and necessary in
the context of the particular conditions obtainable during that period and in
respect of persons and places concerned, may not necessarily be proper,
beneficial under different conditions or during another period. They might
even be highly objectionable, detrimental and so unnecessary at times under
different conditions or with different persons. May those actions then refer to
religion or politics or other walks of life! Samartha Ramdas Swami, well-
versed in religious and political sciences, has succinctly made the same point
in the following words:
समया सारखा समयो ये ना।
नेम कची चालेना
नेम धरिता राजकारणा
व्यत्ययो पडे। श्री दासबोध दशक 18-6-6
“Conditions are not exactly similar, nor can one rule prevail (for ever)! If
one rule is followed (every time) in politics, difficulties arise.
[Ramdas—Shree Dasbodh - 18.6.6]
Hindu War Policy on The Religious and
Political Front
638-639. It is made amply clear in chapters V to XII of this book that in
their religio-political war with the Muslims, which the Hindus fought most
tenaciously for centuries together, the Hindu war-policy had not been
sufficiently strong to defeat the Muslim on the religious front. Why, it
proved to be definitely weak and suicidal in comparison with the
diabolically ferocious war-strategy of the Muslims on that front. For, the
Hindu nation had completely forgotten, at least in respect of the religious
side of it, that a nation has, as a rule, to adopt a war-strategy far stricter,
crueller and more unrelenting than that of the unscrupulous enemy it wants
to conquer.
640. During the Vedic and the Puranic (mythological) period, the
ancestors of the Hindu Nation had to fight the Daityas, the Danavs and the
Rakshasas, the cruellest, most atrocious and cunning cannibals of the time.
It is because (as the Vedic and Puranik stories show) those of our ancestors,
our gods, our emperors, the Vedic Rishis who chanted war canticles, the
epic poets of the Puranans and all those who actively participated in the war
could become more atrocious, more deceptive and cunning, and far crueller
than those enemies like the Rakshasas and others. It is because they could
formulate an adequate war policy to meet the ever-changing guiles of the
enemy and practise it effectively so that they could always succeed in those
various wars, and our nation too became stronger and more expansive than
before.
641. It was not on the political front alone, but on the religious front too,
that the enemy had to be faced in those times! When Vishwamitra took
Shreeram to the forest to protect the Rishis, the latter was told at great
length how those Rakshasas destroyed the religious rites of the time, viz.
the sacrifices, and how the daughters of the Rishis were kidnapped. Later on
in, Dandakaranya, Shreeram came to know what great havoc had the
Rakshasa army of Ravan wrought upon the hermitages of the Rishis, who
were in a minority there, with their sacrificial rites, with their colonies and
even with their lives. Ram was also shown at various places the heaps of
bones of those Rishis, whose blood those cannibals had drunk and whose
flesh they had eaten. This will clearly show that this long-drawn
mythological war of our ancestors with the Rakshasas was fought not only
on the political but also on the religious front. And at that time, those gods
and god-like emperors, too, considered it the holiest religious duty to show
super-savage cruelty to beat down the cruelty of the Rakshasas, to be arch-
devils against the devils! (For a fuller discussion of the point, please refer to
paragraphs 460 to 461 of this book). It is enough to mention here that the
incarnation of Nursinh, who appeared in the most terrifying form in order to
protect the great devotee Prahlad and who tore to pieces his religious
enemy, the wicked Hiranya Kashipu with his leonine talons was—
A God-Head of our Nation
was our leader! The story of Kacha also shows that in the war, our gods
followed the policy—
642. व्रजन्ति ते मूढधियः पराभवम्। भवन्ति मायाविषु ये न
मायिनः॥
To fight the crafty enemy with super-craft, to destroy barbarism with
hyper-barbarity, as the only effective means of annihilating the foe, was the
praiseworthy principle of religious warfare of our ancestors till, at least, the
close of the Puranic era.
643. However, when gods fought against other gods, or when there were
internecine wars like that of the Kouravas and the Pandavas, the war
strategy differed completely. No single charioteer was to be attacked by
many charioteers; the submissive or surrendering warrior was to be given
his life. Such considerations for justice and injustice were to be actually
shown on the battlefield. This ethics of war was preached because it was
honoured by both the contending parties.
644. But, as we have already pointed out in paragraph 315, the invasions
of varying magnitudes of the Persians, the Ionians, the Greeks, the Sakas
and the Kushanas and the Huns, which began at the close of the Puranic
period and continued during the early part of our historic past, were all
made mainly for political ascendancy and not for any religious enmity.
Their own religions were more or less like the offshoots of Hinduism itself.
Later on, after their defeat by our Hindu ancestors, the millions of these
foreign invaders, who chose to settle here, merged into the Hindu society
completely. So during this early historical period, in the absence of any
religious aggression by these foreigners on our religion, our ancestors
fought pure and simple political wars with them with effective strategical
counter-moves and vanquished them completely. As these wars were purely
political in nature, the question of religiosity or irreligiosity, of extreme
kindness, truth, violence or non-violence or other fine distinctions of
principles never arose! Naturally, the tendency to retaliate in the same
fashion even on the religious front—to face religious aggression with
counter religious offensives—to meet cruelty with supra-cruel blows, craft
with super-craft, violence with extreme violence and to consider this war
policy to be a highly religious duty of a brave warrior—lay dormant in our
national mind, because there was no occasion for them to use such war
tactics on the religious front long after the religious wars with the
Rakshasas.
645. Moreover, during this intervening period, the different religious sects
that were really the offshoots of the Vedic religion, and had a strong
propensity to Sanyas (renunciation or asceticism) and extreme non-violence
like the Ajivakas, the Jains, the Buddhists and others, preached to the
society that true religion meant extreme non-vidence, kindness, love and
truth and nothing else. Among the rest of the Vedic population, class
distinctions and their development into caste differences and the religious
traditions about food-exchange, touchables and untouchables, which cut to
pieces the composite life of the society, were growing stronger and these
very, really anti-social traditions came to be considered as true religion.
Later on, flesh-eating was prohibited even in the sacrificial rites. The fact
that the extreme forms and manifestations of truth most often prove to be
the harmful vices was lost sight of by the religious ideology of the time,
while the excessive inopportune and suicidal use of virtues, which ruined
the nation, was itself considered the highest form of religious conduct.
Generally speaking, truthful conduct is a virtue. To satisfy a promised gift
or word is also a virtue! But when in the heat of extolling virtues to the
skies, the Puranas (mythological stories) told the story of Harishchandra,
who made good his promise given to Vishwamitra in his dream by
presenting him with his kingdom and such other childish stories, they
definitely changed the national war-policy into an imbecile, weak and
suicidal one. No words can adequately condemn this influence of the
Puranas. More respectable than this truthful conduct was considered the
practice of non-violence as the highest form of virtue, not only by the Jains
and the Buddhists but in some of the Vaishnav texts also, which later on
hastened our terrible downfall as determinedly and as enormously as even
our enemies, the Muslims, could not perhaps accomplish. Manliness and
valour came to be condemned as the vilest of vices. The unmanly, the
imbecile, the valour-lacking coward, not only lacking the ability but even
the desire to avenge the national insult and injustice, came to be highly
respected in religious circles as the greatest and most magnanimous saint,
ripe for an honourable place in heaven.
646. This point has already been adequately discussed with sufficient
proofs and illustration in chapter VIII under the caption ‘Perverted Sense of
Virtues’ and in other chapters also; and it will be touched again, while we
shall be narrating the events on the political front. Here, it has to be
remembered that as all the invasions on India after the Puranic times had
been political and not religious (at least not of such huge dimensions as
those of the Rakshasas so as to shake the very foundation of our religion),
we had completely forgotten the old war-strategy to meet such terrible
religious aggression. Our very definitions of virtues and religion and their
practice had undergone a complete change. The war-strategy of Nursinh of
the ancient times, which sought a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye had
now become vegetarian, submissive, tolerant and shameless!
647. Naturally, when Islam invaded Hinduism with far more ferocity and
bitterness and with more dangerous weapons than the Rakshasas of the
Puranic age, our Hindu ancestors of the seventh century had no other war-
strategy to face it with than the imbecile, impotent and suicidal—one which
offered milk to a venomous serpent. To encounter the wolf, the sheep had
preferred its own neck! All this, as also our consequent enormous losses on
the religious front, has been clearly shown in the earlier chapters. Hence,
we shall now begin a critical study of the political side of this Hindu-
Muslim epic struggle.