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

are bygones; today we are born Muslims and are Muslim nationals. We recognize no other relation with the Hindus than the one of utmost hatred and animosity." Such thoughts had turned their heads completely. Theirs was not merely a change of religion, but it was the inevitable change of nationality which necessarily forced itself upon the later generations of such converts. During the five or six centuries of the initial Muslim invasions of India, right up to Rameshwar to which we are referring here, the change of religion today generally proved to be the change of nationality for the future! But what does Religion mean here? 380. But the terms 'religion' and 'religious conversion' in the above maxim, viz. the 'the change of the religion means the change of nationality', should first be defined clearly. They are not used here in the sense of comparative study of the various philosophical ideas and systems in different religions or the adoption of some of the agreeable ones in an individual capacity. The word 'religion' in the present context relates solely to the dogmatic and fanatical practices of those aggressive religious institutions, which insist that a particular book is apocalyptic, that whatever is told in its pages—and that alone and nothing else—is truly religious, that everything else is completely false and sinful. It then tries to enforce on people of other religions the strict observance, if not by advice and peaceful discourse and persuasion, even by skilful craftiness, cruelty and coercion, of not only the so-called philosophy in those religious books, but of the rules and regulations, of rites and rituals, of the language and social dealings prescribed by them. The religious conversion effected by such thoughtless and fanatical religious institutions is, in effect, the conversion of nationality. Retaliatory Weapon of Ostracism 381. The Hindus could find no retaliatory weapon for this religious aggression of the Muslims. The weapon of ostracism, which they used for retaliation, turned on themselves like a boomerang. 382. In order that the reader should have a clear idea of this weapon of social ostracism, so far as it concerns the Hindu-Muslim war and how it affected, not favourably, but adversely the defence of the Hindu religion and Hindu community, it is essential to give first of all an account of the caste-system as briefly as it is possible to do so. Since such an account is absolutely esential for an analysis of the Muslim pollution of the Hindus.