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

The Beginning of the Final Overthrow of the Muslim Empire 818. Soon after slaying Shree Dharmarakshak (Nasir-ud-din), Ghyasuddin Tughlak ascended the throne of the Delhi Sultanate in A.D. 1321 and issued a proclamation to that effect. This was the end of the Khilji dynasty and the beginning of the Tughlak rule. 819. Ghyasuddin too was old. Naturally, he treated the Muslims leniently. But although born of a Hindu jat mother, he strangely enough did not fall short of any type of religious persecution of the Hindus perpetrated by any or all of the former Muslim Sultans! 820. Ghyasuddin died in A.D. 1326 and was succeeded by his son Mohammed Tughlak, who has gone down in history as ‘crazy’. He once had a strange whim of shifting his capital from Delhi to Devgiri in the south. Immediately, he changed the name of Devgiri, according to the Muslim tradition, into Doulatabad, just as Warangal had been changed earlier by the Muslim into Sultanpur. But this change of capital from Delhi to Devgiri caused him and his subjects so much trouble, disrupted his already confusion-fraught revenue system so completely, and so many insurrections and political risings were brewing in the royal families and the people at large in the Deccan (as already pointed out in the previous chapter) that this ‘crazy’ Mohammed was ultimately forced to have another whim of shifting the capital once again back to Delhi. But this short interlude cost millions (crores) of rupees and thousands of lives. 820A. With a view to getting out of this financial trouble, he introduced the copper coins, which drained his treasury completely; but he blamed the farmers and the other gentry for it, saying that they did not pay the taxes. He, therefore, issued orders to his fighting forces to collect the revenue under compulsion, but while the Muslims were shown all leniency in the collection of taxes, the Hindus were most cruelly forced to pay them. Just as the beasts are surrounded on all sides in a hunting expedition and are held at bay and then massacred, similarly a number of Hindu towns and villages were besieged and the Hindu population therein was mercilessly put to the sword. (This sort of persecution devastated numerous Hindu towns and villages, while whole province like Kanouj were rendered desolate!)