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

that a common reader or a small pupil is quite likely to think that the Hindus offered practically no resistance worth the name, that the Muslims were never halted in their advance. After the conquest of Sindh, the Muslim victor mounted, as it were, a magic horse and went on conquering the whole of India and never, till they reached Kanyakumari, did they alight from it. This is obviously childish! The Intervening Period 357. To avoid this misconception and to nullify the injustice done to the Hindu nations, a true historian, whose avowed duty is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, should effectively and proportionately, describe the intervals between any two Muslim invasions and the heroic resistance, successful or otherwise, offered by the Hindus. After the fall of Sindh in A.D. 711, Hindu kings most effectively checked the Muslim advance outside Sindh for more or less 300 years. But this Hindu heroism quite easily escapes the notice of the common reader, because in almost all the textbooks of Indian History, it is not so impressively mentioned. 358. It is because we utter the words ‘three hundred years’ or three centuries within three seconds, that the enormous length of this intervening period quite escapes our notice, unless we are expressly told about it. We should, therefore, measure the period in question by generations of people. Five generations make up 300 years! The British rule over India, for instance, seems too lengthy to the present generation. But measured in centuries, it lasted only for one and a half. Compared with it, the Hindu valour in arresting the Muslim onslaught within the confines of Sindh for more or less 300 years, assumes a greater historical significance. The same holds good with regard to the other intervening periods. 359. One cannot say justifiably that the Muslim vigour or their ambition to conquer the world was on the wane. On the contrary, these both were at their full height during this period. During this very period of three hundred years, these very Arabs had overrun and vanquished nation-after-nation, right from Baghdad to the Mediterranean Sea and thence along the north African coast straight to Gilbralter, whence they subjugated Portugal and Spain and knocked at the gates of southern France. The name Gibralter itself testifies to the unrivalled Muslim conquest of the West Jebal-Tarik, which means the straits conquered by the Muslim Commander Tarik, which is the root of the modern corrupt form ‘Gilbralter’.