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

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