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

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