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

women and men, and to massacre others, to burn, devastate and demolish the Hindu capital cities, their temples, the idols of their Gods, to reduce to ashes their libraries of religious books and do all sorts of wrongs to them were all the ‘holy acts’ of the Muslim Gazis—the defenders of the Muslim faith! All these ‘holy’ acts were done to chastise the kafirs strictly according to the Muslim religious and ethical code, for their inexcusable (unpardonable) sin of being kafirs! When the kafirs call these holy acts atrocities, they must be plainly told that they were not atrocities at all! They were all righteous and virtuous acts! It is the bounden duty of every faithful follower of Islam, that he must thus chastise the kafirs whenever, and to whatever extent, he might be able to do so. 913. “But for the Hindus to call our religious chastisement atrocities and to retaliate against our holy religion as a reaction against our so-called cruelties, to burn our pure masjids because we have burned their temples— it is simply diabolic!—atrocious in the extreme!” 914. It is because the Muslims had this perverted conception of their religious duty that they marched upon Vijaynagar primarily as it was a Hindu State, and as the Hindus stubbornly refused to become Muslims. Even if the Vijaynagar armies had not invaded the Bahamani Muslim States, as they often did, and even if they had not retaliated with equal vehemence against the usual Muslim atrocities by burning their masjids and houses and plundering their property, all the Muslim Sultans would have attacked Vijaynagar Hindus simply for their fault of being Hindus. They would have committed the same inhuman atrocities, even if the Hindus of Vijaynagar had not done them any harm, had they but got an opportunity to do so! Why did the Muslim Armies go back after the Pillage of Vijaynagar? 915. The underlying reason why the Muslim armies drew back after pillaging Vijaynagar and did not pursue the fleeing Hindus is that they dared not do so; for the state of Vijaynagar had broken away from the old Hindu tradition of meek submission and tight-lipped endurance and had begun to reciprocate atrocities with counter-atrocities and reprisals with super-reprisals! 916. As has already been told above, Ramrai’s brother, Commander Tirumalrai, had already left Vijaynagar with his army into the South and was re-forming his forces for another knock. Had the Muslims advanced further they were bound to meet with strong opposition from Tirumal’s