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

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.